


The Farmer and the Viper

by superhumandisasters



Series: Up Close Ache [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Amnesia, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blasphemy, Boys in Chains, Come Eating, Dehumanization, F/M, Face-Sitting, Food Issues, Forced Orgasm, Gangbang, HTP, HYDRA Trash Party, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Multi, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Oral Sex, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Prostate Milking, Queenpins, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sexual Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Vaginal Sex, Violence, equal opportunity evil, literal hydra party favor, really going all out on this one y'all, resilient Winter Soldier, unless you find comfort in slaughtering some HYDRA agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:41:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superhumandisasters/pseuds/superhumandisasters
Summary: Rumlow smirks at the kid. “Not what you were expecting?”New guy tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “...the arm is cool.”“Oh, yeah. Real cool.” Because Rumlow has seen this a dozen times at least: agents with a brand-new highclearance, thrilled to confront a legend – the Winter Soldier. They’re all assets, technically, but this is THE asset, the ultimate cyborg assassin bogeymonster. Then what they think they get is half idiot-savant, half neglected pet. Wide-shouldered and docile as an ox.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written at the hydratrashmeme for the following prompt:  
>  _Between wipes he doesn't really remember how being turned on feels, or even what it is. Sometimes he tries to deal with it by himself, successfully or unsuccessfully. Sometimes he goes to an authority figure for help._
> 
> More details below. All installments are un-beta'd, so comments, corrections, and suggestions are welcome.

United Arab Emirates, 2012

 

When you’ve clocked as many hours in the field as Brock Rumlow, the ragged cough of chopper blades sounds natural as your mama’s own heart beat in the womb. _Whuk-whuk-whuk_ : a rhythm you feel in your chest more than the tiny bones of the ear. Powerful, soothing. He lets the rhythm drag him down into the Naugahyde of his seat.

Kildare, however, looks a little green around the gills.

“S’matter, kid?” Rumlow elbows him. “You bad with heights?”

“Nah. It’s just.” Kildare glances out the window and fidgets for the thousandth fucking time. “What if somebody _finds them?_ ” 

A cut-off huff of laughter from the cockpit. Agent Rollins.

Rumlow follows the kid’s view to where they’d disposed of the helicopter’s original crew: rolling red dunes, taller than tsunami. Hell’s own ocean. “That’s the Empty Quarter, rook. Buzzards would be lucky to find ‘em. We might as well have dumped them on the fuckin’ moon.”

Nothing more than blood on the floor. It really was that easy sometimes; hallelujah for the Arabian Peninsula. _Whuk-whuk-whuk._

Out the other window, he can already see the road uglying the desertscape, looking awkward as a hair on a microscope slide. The ants crawling along it are a convoy of South American mercenaries posing as construction workers. This is a milk run.

“Comin’ up on time,” says Rollins. He tilts the chopper towards the convoy. They won’t blink at its presence – it’s their equipment, they’ll be expecting the fly-over.

Rumlow shifts his attention to the asset, black-clad and straight-backed on the other side of the cabin. “You ready?”

The asset nods. Its face is completely concealed behind the mask and goggles. Rollins refers to this fondly as the killer automaton look. Brock calls it murder-bot mode.

“You gotta piss or shit?”

The asset shakes a no.

“Anything else?”

A pause. The asset cocks its head toward the plastic bottle by Brock’s thigh.

“Nuh-uh. No water until after.” The mask is a bitch to do and undo again, plus water intake will compromise the pissing situation. And he has orders to keep the asset wanting. “Remember: rendezvous with Team Bravo only after all objectives have been confirmed.”

The asset croaks, “Confirmed. All objectives.” Then it turns the weight of its glassy focus to its body for a weapons check. Brock already knows everything is in order, but the asset moves through its arsenal with quiet efficiency.

Rumlow knows Kildare is staring. He smirks at the kid. “Not what you were expecting?”

New guy tries to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “...the arm is cool.”

“Oh, yeah. Real cool.” Because Rumlow has seen this a dozen times at least, agents with a brand-new high  
clearance, thrilled to confront a legend – the Winter Soldier. They’re all assets, technically, but this is _the_ asset, the ultimate cyborg assassin bogeymonster. Then what they think they get is half idiot-savant, half neglected pet. Wide-shouldered and docile as an ox.

“It’s wired right up to the asset’s brain, the arm is,” Brock says. “That thing goes through metal like it’s meat, and through meat like it’s butter. One time-” 

The asset whips its head north. 

Rumlow follows its line of sight just in time to see a plume of fire and debris unfolding in front of the train of vehicles. He watches the blast wave bloom across the sand, rippling through the atmosphere and arriving as a dull boom a few seconds after the explosion, a wall of hot wind that stinks of ammonium. The shock slaps through his ribs harder than the rhythm of the helicopter blades.

The convoy brakes to a jagged queue behind the pillar of smoke as a second explosion belches skyward and collapses the asphalt to a crater. Agent Cross.

All eyes are on the inferno, on charred metal twirling down like autumn leaves. The mercs ignore Rollins dipping across the back of their line. Kildare fumbles to shoulder his rifle. The asset is already crouched by the door.

“ _Soldat._ ” Brock has to yell over the chop and billowing air. The asset’s gaze drags across Rumlow, heavy as lead, and Rumlow feels the familiar weight of it settle on him even from behind the goggles. Only its wind-tangled hair moves. Rumlow claps a palm against its metal shoulder, says, “Rip ‘em up.”

The Winter Soldier turns to the open fuselage, then steps into the void. It drops forty feet and crumples the hood of a jeep under its boots. The chopper feels more buoyant in its absence.

Time slows. Mercenaries swarm to the asset like ants to honey, like moths. 

The asset rips them up.

The asset doesn’t need the prosthetic limb to collapse throats or cave-in chests. Men drop, their strings cut under the fist or the bullet or the blade. A few mercs try to take cover and snipe the Soldier from around wheel-wells and across roll bars. Rumlow picks them off. A few even fall under Kildare’s rifle, and spent shells rattle through the cabin. The enemy’s numbers are staggered, strung out and thinned along the line of vehicles, their weapon caches hidden under construction equipment. 

When Rollins buzzes over the lead cars, Brock can see men dragging equipment away from the flames, still unaware of the slaughterhouse behind them. The chopper sweeps back toward the Winter Soldier, and Brock squeezes off a few more rounds. 

“Team Alpha is on active close air support,” he barks into his headset. “C’mon, Gutierrez. _C’mon._ ”

“On the way, man,” Gutierrez crackles over the comm. “Munitions, out.”

Rollins turns the bird around and hovers above the asset, matching the Winter Soldier’s measured strides. The asset just moseys along the heat-shivering asphalt. The asset scythes right through.

A clump of them rush in together. They come at the asset like it’s a man, but the Soldier rips off an armored car door to collect their pistol fire, until they empty their magazines and the asset flips the sheet of dented steel horizontal to take out three men in a swipe of rupturing organs and shattering ribs. Its right boot propels up a dislodged bumper, striking two more at hip-level to crush their pelvises. The metal hand collapses a rifle barrel and slams it into its owner’s trachea – he’ll drown in his own blood. The flesh hand perforates the chest of another man with knife strikes landing faster than Brock can count. 

The asset does not defend. When a merc comes at it with a machete, the asset throws its arm up in what would be a block for anyone else, and the attacker’s humerus snaps into a clean fold on impact. Brock can see the ruined limb flopping from the sky. A hook kick sends one man rag-dolling over a hood, shattered spine. Without breaking its spin, the cybernetic elbow drives another body into the pavement with the force of car crash. The concrete buckles under his corpse. The asset strips a Beretta from the dead man and drops the last merc trying to ambush it from behind. Dispatching the coordinated assault takes less than thirty seconds.

It’s beautiful, every time. A bloody Midas whose every touch brings death. Rumlow glances over at Kildare, finds the young agent is slack-jawed, rifle half off his shoulder. Brock allows himself a curl of satisfaction. _How do you like my dog now?_

And the asset just moseys along. Rumlow’s getting impatient, though. “The hell you at, Team Bravo?”

Gutierrez: “Right behind you.”

A black armored van hurtles into view below the helicopter. It weaves through the downed cars, thumps over two corpses before pulling alongside the asset. Agent Dragomirov doesn’t wait for the vehicle to stop before he leaps from the passenger side and trots to the Soldier, wordlessly handing the asset fresh weapons, then doubles back to put a bullet in the screamer with the ruined arm. 

At Brock’s command, Agent Cross pops up from a camouflaged trench. The blind is buried in a ditch beside the road, all but invisible even from the air, good as any magic trick. Cross sprints toward the van with the detonation equipment strapped across her shoulders. She dumps it with Gutierrez, then drops back with Dragomirov to flank the asset from a distance. They search through the cars with handheld infrared scanners, search the dead, exterminate the merely injured. They stay out of the way. 

The formation is deeply satisfying to Brock. As is the panicked response of the enemy. Looks like they’ve finally realized the chopper isn’t a friendly, but it’s too late. Far too late. The helicopter’s shadow trails the Winter Soldier like a carrion crow.

The remaining mercenaries scatter like Rumlow’s seen a hundred times on missions and tactical sims and nature docs when wolves cleave through the herd. Brock knows the rush of worthy prey pursued. He also knows the cold satisfaction of perfectly designed entrapment: an air-tight killzone, no survivors. It was over before it started.

––-

Half an hour later, Brock’s taken the wheel and they’re all piled in the van. The crew, _his_ crew. Plus two lockboxes full of cash, a far more valuable case of stolen HYDRA prototypes, and a lukewarm 12-pack. The helicopter is a burning pile of slag alongside its dead masters – pillars of smoke fade to black towers in the rear view mirror.

“Someone,” observes Rollins, “spilled something in here and didn’t clean it up.” 

Brock cracks the windows. Rollins is offended by the weirdest shit, to the point it’s not even weird anymore. Besides, yeah, the van does have that sour reek like the glass was left down in a rainstorm, and where the hell did that come from?

Gutierrez bats the back of Rumlow’s headrest. “Radio. Give us some radio, man.”

“Nothing on. Some Sheik’s brother or cousin or whatever kicked it.”

“That was _four days_ ago, man. Mourning’s over. Stations’re back up now.”

Rollins reaches across the dash to search for 90.7 FM Fujairah, the only tolerable post-mission choice in the Gulf. After a few seconds’ fiddling with the dial, music washes through the speakers to unanimous jubilation. Even Dragomirov looks a few notches less dire, though Gutierrez informs the squad that the live version of “Life During Wartime” from ‘84 is superior.

“Thank Christ and all the angels.” Cross sinks back into her seat and cracks open a beer. “Half a week in the world’s shittiest safehouse, and not even any radio as a distraction.” She nurses the cheap lager like it’s the nectar of the gods. “Water pressure so low I’d swear the pipes go in reverse. You turn on the shower, the room gets dryer.”

“When we get to the hotel,” says Rollins, “I’m taking a shower for _an hour._ ”

A lull falls over the van as they drift into their individual fantasies about the hotel, a Burj with Roman-style bath houses and ivory inlay headboards. The radio floats over all, along with the stink of gore and fire, dust and the unspooling adrenaline that follows every orgy of bloodshed. Brock’s limbs feel slippery-loose, but the day is far from done. It’s barely past noon. A few more cans hiss open as they get handed around the van.

“Pass,” Gutierrez mumbles. 

“Dog’s balls,” says Dragomirov. “What is it now?”

“More like dog’s piss, ‘cause that’s what it tastes like. Anyway,” says Gutierrez, “It’s empty calories. I’m restricting that shit. It’s a life-expanding diet. Karen says–”

Half the van cuts him off with their groans. Brock knows from the comms that Team Bravo is already well-acquainted with the holistic wisdom of Gutierrez’s current girlfriend, the latest obsession he’s locked onto with hyper-focus.

“They’ve done tests on rats, man. Extends their life 30 percent compared to control groups. Extends life _and_ quality.”

“A rat’s measure of quality,” Rollins makes a point of taking a long gulp from his beer. “Doesn’t make any goddamn sense if you’re not a rat.”

“Don’t come crying to me when you’re all dead and I’m cruising to a cool one-twenty.” Gutierrez hunkers in his seat like he’s not pissed about missing out. No fucking way is he making it to a hundred and twenty. None of them will live past 60. Dragomirov’s in his late 50s, and the asset doesn’t count.

The Winter Soldier huddles in the back with the rest of the equipment. Its armored casing is stiff and dark as a beetle’s hull. 

Even the asset isn't what it used to be. Dragomirov says they never used to wipe it so often, and even in Brock’s few years with the Soldier, the techs have upped its medications twice. It still puts on a hell of a performance, but for how much longer? A decade, less? The prospect vultures over him. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Somebody ought to talk to Rogers soon,” he thinks aloud. 

Like how somebody talked to Brock, after he came back from the Gulf with the same death in his eye and a dark taste in his mouth that wouldn’t spit free. 

“Cap?” Rollins glances at him from the front passenger seat. “He’s only been with SHIELD like a year.”

“I know. I was at the party. But we’re not gonna have forever.” Rogers either replaces the Soldier, or he becomes a target. Either way, Kildare doesn’t need to know about Project Insight just yet, so Brock keeps the specifics to himself. “It’d be a waste, is all I’m sayin’. He’s got that look about him.” Compromised. Exploitable.

Brock has a sixth sense for spotting the look. The ghost soldiers: conscripts of the army that never comes home, doesn’t have a home to come back to. Desperation and anger shaking through their veins like a pot of coffee on an empty stomach. Men and women too altered by the chemical change of violence and regret, left unfit for a civilian life where even old comforts feel wrong. 

There’s no going back on the block for them; the Scouring of the Shire and so forth. Tolkien knew what was up, even if Jackson didn’t think to put that part in the fucking movie. The film adaptations remain a point of contention among the team, but as far as Brock is concerned, which guy had lived through trench warfare, and which hadn’t? Case closed. 

Rollins says, “Rogers’ll never flip.”

Gutierrez cuts in, “He’ll be stuck on the name. SHIELD got to him first, fed him all the usual didactics and branding.”

“Fuck the name,” says Brock. “It’s the work that’s important.” He taps the dash for emphasis. “The mission. He just needs somebody who can lay it out right, put into words what he already knows. Like Pierce. Pierce would know what to say. He brought over Fury, for fuck’s sake.”

That gets Kildare’s attention. “Fury’s HYDRA?” 

“Not officially, but it’s not like he doesn’t sign off on half this shit, so what’s the difference? They’re all like that.”

The rookie fiddles with his can’s tab until it pops off, real casual. “So. We’re interested in bringing over Rogers.” He’s fucking terrible at this, it’s almost sad.

Rollins meets Brock’s gaze in the rear view mirror. There’s a lull as the radio transitions to another neurotic synth track.

“Eh, everybody’s interested in Cap,” drawls Rollins. “Then again, he’s interested in everybody, too.”  
.  
“No way.” But Kildare’s splitting into a slow grin. Locker room gossip, so distracting.

Cross gets in on it, “Liberty and justice for _all,_ know what I'm sayin'? Stars and stripes, baby."

"You're fucking with me now."

"Am not. Just watch him watching in the showers, and see. Or better yet, try your luck." Cross leers. Her lips and ponytail are the same deep plum of dried blood. God knows how she keeps it matching after a week in the biggest sandbox in the world. "Let's consult the expert. Hey Winter,” she addresses the back of the van. “Captain Virgin ever suck your dick back in the day?" 

The asset gives her a blank stare. 

"You ever suck _his?_ " 

More heavy blankness.

“Well,” Rollins says, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

“Is that true?” Kildare leans forward. “The whole POW thing? ‘Cause I heard it was grown in some Ruskie test tube, like a vat baby. Is he really–”

"Stop addressing the asset, jerkoffs,” Brock snaps. “And stop with the rhetorical questions. You're just conditioning it to not respond." 

And the attention makes it fidget. The Barnes theory is bullshit anyway, because what are the odds? The resemblance is there if you squint, but everybody’s got a doppelganger or three. Everybody wants to find a pattern.

The van shuts up, if you don’t count Gutierrez tapping along to a single that probably came out when he was in preschool. Kildare tries to woo Cross with another beer. Brock should tell the kid not to cozy up to fellow squad members, especially ones fifteen years older and a hundred times more sadistic, but hey–Darwinism at work. 

The kid can’t keep quiet for more than a couple songs. "I don't have anything against Rogers, okay, but imagine if they sent the asset after him."

"Ahahah, oh my God." Cross.

"Who else _could_ they send?" Rollins.

Dragomirov snorts. “Your good Captain stands no chance.”

“You ever seen our good Captain fight?”

The older man scowls, offended. “No. Chance.” Dragomirov pets the asset’s hair. He’s the only one who touches it in the field.

"And it'd blow Rogers’ mind. If, y’know, it’s true..."

"Especially if they used’ta screws.” Cross’ eyes light up. “Christ, it’d be a hundred times worse."

"I thought I had a crazy ex.” Kildare is warming up to it. “This is on another level."

Brock cranks up the radio. “Can't you idiots think of anything else?" 

He knows the crew needs to blow off steam after a mission, so he’s not gonna ride them too hard about the chatter. Truth is, he kind of likes Steve. Truth is, Steve’s just a kid – without even half the combat experience Brock has – yeah, but he’s _Steven Grant Rogers._ Brock’s knuckles whiten around the steering wheel. He thinks a minute and finally concedes, "What a fucking fight that'd be, though."

The squad coos in unison. 

“Super soldier versus super soldier!” Cross breathes. “Battle royale! That shit's getting me wet just _thinking_ about it." 

Rollins says, “It'd either be the fight of the century, or they start making out and summon Gozer." He looks around when nobody responds. "Keymaster, Gatekeeper? You’re all philistines."

“We're just not huge fucking nerds, _Jack._ "

“Shut up, _Vicky._ ”

Christ above. Rumlow tunes out their fight-chat and accepts one of the lukewarm cans, because the local authorities won’t touch him, and he’d really like to relax enough to take a nap in his room. Smooth as this morning went, knowing the job is only half-done will keep him on edge. His fingers itch for a cigarette. Instead he clutches the aluminum of the shitty brew, and it’s not until he’s downed half of it in one gulp that he realizes how parched he’s been. He ought to be more careful, stay hydrated. This is nosebleed weather. 

Twilight falls sudden as a thunderclap this near the equator. The dying sun sets fire to the crystal towers of Dubai, a hallucination of neon and glass rising from beige flats. Smoke and dust behind, light and mirrors ahead, currently set to the soundtrack of Toto’s “Africa.” Brock is aware how weird his life has become that nothing is weird anymore.

––-

2100 hours. The Burj's most lavish ballroom. Black tie.

Brock brushes a hand down his suit jacket. The tux is more comfortable than body armor, but he knows he looks good in both, especially after a bath and rest. Fitful rest. Okay, maybe just lying awake on the mattress for an hour, but it’s a really fucking nice mattress.

The rest of the squad should already be here, except for Dragomirov. The old man had herded the asset into the technicians’ care, shorn grey head bowed over shaggy dark, then retreated to his own quarters. Dragomirov is one of the hardest men Rumlow’s ever known, so he’s not worried about him going soft on the asset, feeding it Reese’s Pieces or jerky like an idiot tech. Brock suspects his absence has less to do with squeamishness and more to do with a mission that went straight to shit in the 80’s: Dragomirov waking from a concussion to find his Soviet team wiped out and a half-dead asset – chewed to hell by Mi-24 chopper blades – dragging him to extraction mile over bloody mile of the Khyber Pass. So. Dragomirov never comes to the parties. Hypocrite. 

Anyway, “extravagant” isn’t exactly the greybeard's style, but HYDRA loves it – they’re at their nastiest when they look their finest – and the bankroll for this event has been supplemented by a few Sheiks grateful for help in pruning the competition. 

Brock finds himself standing under a chandelier the size of a respectable kitchen. The foyer has gold-plated everything, and the main hall is even worse: it looks like an opera house stripped of its chairs and refurnished with plush carpets over polished marble floors. This isn’t much Brock’s style either, to be honest.

First thing he does is locate the bar. He threads through the crowded banquet tables and rustling couples, listening for conversation out of habit. He can’t pick up anything. Velvet hangings draped from the ceiling soak up every echo and keep the ballroom surprisingly quiet for its size. The chamber music piped in from God-knows-where has the right volume to cancel any remaining ambient sound, quiet enough to be forgotten the moment Brock stops paying attention to it. His dress shoes are silent over the rugs. Nice.

“Rumlow!” Kildare swivels off a bar stool and all but clings to Brock in relief. One look tells him the kid hasn’t learned to invest in a really good suit yet. Off the rack shit. Brock’s starting to lose track of the times he almost feels sorry for him. Kildare joined HYDRA after graduating in engineering followed by two years’ unemployment. The kid had done everything he was supposed to: go to college, get a STEM degree, look for a job. It wasn’t his fault the economy tanked and the system was broken. 

His mistake had been greed, and the stupidity to act on it. Brock keeps him at a distance. 

“Can I get you a drink?” Kildare gestures with his glass – something dark, on the rocks. 

“Beer’s fine.” He’d like something stronger, but he needs to stay alert. HYDRA’s selection tastes miles better than the swill from the van. A hearty sediment of yeast clouds the bottom of his glass.

“I can’t recognize half this stuff,” Kildare admits. He pokes a laden tray. “What are these, rotten dinosaur eggs?”

“Brandied dates.” Brock smiles. “With cream cheese filling. They’re good.” They really are.

A grandmotherly cut-crystal candy dish sits next to the dates. It’s heaped with powder and radiating a corona of tiny silver spoons. Kildare guesses it’s confectioners sugar.

“Coke, probably,” says Brock. He taps a fingertip to the powder and touches the residue to his tongue. “Yup. Fucking classic.” 

The numb spread in his mouth throws him back to the salad days. Back when he was a rook himself, fresh from his first tour with Rollins, when he hadn’t known what brandied dates were, either, but he’d known cocaine wouldn’t do shit compared to the high of being under fire. They’re back in the Gulf, and event control has tightened up considerably. Tomorrow there’s going be a list of everyone who hits the coke candy bowl a little too hard tonight.

They drift toward the main buffet table where Gutierrez is loading up a plate. Brock drifts, Kildare heels. Gutierrez lifts up his china when he sees them. His suit is more appropriate. “They got mini lobsters, man. Mini lobsters!” 

"You mean, like crawfish?" 

Gutierrez shakes his head enigmatically. “Nah.” He breaks off a claw. “This is way better than when I was here for that Hamas wetwork back in ‘10. They didn’t feed us _nothing._ ” Brock wasn’t deployed for that one, but he knows Gutierrez spent 22 mystery months, mostly in Africa, raising the kind of hell Brock doesn’t need to know about. 

There’s no cloth on the table, just a forest’s worth of dark, sturdy wood festooned with the lobsters, with fruit sculptures nestled in the coils of barbecued snakes. Whole, roast suckling pigs draped in strings of pearls. Stews of cow and duck fetuses tender enough to eat with a spoon. Peacock feathers erupt from steaming rib cages. Small octopuses twitch in lacquered bowls half-filled with frozen red wine. Brock can’t tell if they’re alive and sluggish from the cold, or if the writhing is merely a reflex action. It’s a clever accent piece, blood-red tentacles coiling in death.

Kildare stares at the spread. “They just leave all this out?” He touches a cluster of black pearls. “But anyone could take them.” Christ.

Gutierrez stares back. “They’re safe as Vlad’s golden goblet in the village square.” 

The kid pouts like he wants to ask more, but Cross and Rollins are swishing toward them arm in arm. Cross is wearing plum like always. Something long and glossy, not bad. She reaches across the table to steal a roasted apple from the suckling’s jaws, then replaces it with a moribund octopus. Its frosted tentacle curls lethargically around the piglet’s snout. 

“Hey,” Rollins smirks at Brock. “Nice cummerbund. Did you know, historically one of the uses–”

“Yes, I do know, Jack.” Brock pulls half his suit jacket aside to reveal the handgun tucked into the cloth. It does work pretty well. Historically-speaking.

Jack smiles for real. He’s got his hair slicked back but doesn’t look like a goon for once. And his outfit might be better than Brock’s, which is annoying. He turns his stupid face to Gutierrez and says, “So I read about your reduced calorie shit on Wikipedia. You know, resveratrol, from grapes, is supposed to do the same thing.”

Gutierrez frowns. “Those studies are inconclusive.”

“So are yours.”

They half-glare at each other for a while, until Gutierrez says, “Want a turmeric capsule? They’re anti-inflammatory.” Rollins takes one, and Gutierrez glances at the frozen wine with new interest. The tension between them dissolves on its own, thankfully, because Brock doesn’t have the energy to babysit right now.

Cross and her piglet’s apple have gotten side-tracked. Now she’s chatting it up with some financier wearing traditional garb Brock can’t identify the homeland of, but will make a point of looking up later. (Moldova?) Cross grew up HYDRA. Both parents, a sister, and at least two cousins he’s aware of are active in the service. Always seems like she knows everyone at these events. 

God, he’s got to pay better attention, he’s got to keep up, especially tonight. Situational awareness. He resists the urge to press his temples. Maybe he’s still dehydrated.

Rollins (how the hell did he get so close?) nudges Brock and says under his breath, “You crashing?”

Fuck you. “It’s fine.” Post-mission drops can happen to anyone. Come down off the adrenaline, and sometimes you keep on falling. It can happen to anyone. Brock doesn’t bounce back fast as he used to. If he’s honest, he not as fast about a lot of things. Nothing he can’t handle, though. Brock’s still in good enough shape that mostly all age has done to him is make him more dangerous. Anyway, Cross is floating back into their personal space. He shrugs Rollins off. “M’fine.”

“Tell him,” Cross whispers. “Tell ‘em, Jack.” 

Rollins glances at her with a pained expression. He shoves a chunk of claw meat in his mouth instead.

Cross is so glittery with delight that it turns Brock’s stomach. She grins a burgundy grin and nibbles at the apple.

“What,” he says flatly.

“It’s the ice Mary,” Cross says, too pleased to wait for Rollins to spit it out. “There’s an ice Mary!”

Ice Mary? Is this some slang he’s behind on? He searches his memory for drug lingo, weapons, sex positions... 

Cross perches her apple core on the roast piglet’s head, then grabs Brock’s elbow to tow him alongside Rollins. Gutierrez and Kildare trail behind in a perverse flock formation. The unease sitting in Brock’s gut since he arrived back at the Burj stirs to a roil.

She leads them to one of the smaller side rooms, just as opulent as the grand ballroom, but more private in scale. A table outside is strewn with columns of firearms. 

Brock vaguely recognizes the agent standing guard – short but powerfully built, too surly to catch his interest. Amy, Amelia? Speaking of one of Cross’ numerous cousins. 

Probably-Amy says, “Weapons at the door.”

There’s some general grumbling as they disarm. The asset getting spit-roasted by loaded Glocks had been a big hit at the last party.

“Give me a break. I didn’t make the rules.” She makes a face at Cross and assigns their guns to empty slots.

Brock doesn’t complain. He’s not the only one to notice the foot-thick threshold and reinforced door. Steel, likely. No other exits. Sliding bolts that could seal this chamber into a gilded vault. The lighting inside is dimmer without mirrors all over the walls to amplify it – they like to keep the asset away from mirrors. 

Inside, there it is. He’d know the silhouette anywhere, even in a dream. Looming against the back wall, framed by a parted curtain of glass beads and bigger than life, is a literal ice Mary. 

 

Decorate a party in the middle of an Islamic desert nation by hauling in an eight foot tall ice sculpture of the Holy Virgin. Some wiseass caterer is probably patting himself on the back, Brock thinks. Yeah, they were rolling on the fucking floor when they came up with this one.

Her face is serene – ghostly translucent in shadow, pale as platinum in the light. She's seated in a Pietà, a pose he's seen a hundred times as a kid, but the figure draped across her lap is anything but the body of Christ. 

“Aw, _fuck._ ”

Rollins has his lips pressed together like he's trying not to laugh. Cross isn't even trying. 

The asset is naked. Head thrown back, one cheek pressed against the Virgin’s icy breast, tucked away from the room. Its muscled bulk is rendered sinuous and petite by the size of the sculpture. It shivers in her arms. It doesn’t shiver enough to dislodge the shining trays of hors d'oeuvres balanced across its chest and lap. Maintenance techs have waxed it hairless below the chin, oiled its body to a pearly luster complementing the gleam of the platters, the plated metal arm, the matching plated metal muzzle, wrist cuff, ankle cuffs, collar. The ice. Every extremity punctuated by interlocking panels of silver. 

Someone spent a long time composing this scene, making it perfect, _making it art,_ and maybe that’s what pisses Brock off. Because what it is, is ridiculous. He doesn’t have an aversion to a good fuck, but this. This is like those people who dress up their dogs in little gowns, except worse, because instead of a Shih Tzu or toy poodle in frills, it’s a fine hunting dog forced into silks. He’s mortified for the soldier, which is likely the point. And it’s fucking _breathtaking_ , which is, okay, certainly the point. 

Mostly, he’s just exhausted. Brock has a premonition of the long evening unfolding before him, and he regrets every minute wasted not dozing in his room. Fatigue has his right hand jittering the remains of his beer, trying to claw around a rifle that isn’t there.

Thing is, it can always get worse. Been a long time since he learned the ability to get worse is one of the few constants in the universe. 

“Rumlow. Long day at the office?”

Brock turns from the asset to come eye-level with the receding blond crew-cut of Agent Schwartz, commanding officer of STRIKE Team 3. Brock, fortunately, has trained the ligaments of his face to fall into grim, inscrutable angles in an instant. He definitely does not sneer. “Oh yeah, all that paperwork takes it right out of me. Never did get as good at driving a desk as some. Guess I was too busy keeping tabs on my squad.”

The meaningless curve of Schwartz’s mouth never extends to his eyes. A few muscles in his jaw jump. “And you’re doin’ a great job, but don’t work yourself too hard,” he grits out. “This is some mandatory fun we got right here.” 

Brock returns the bland smile. “Thanks for caring, buddy, but I know how to relax. You might have noticed I donned a fucking suit for the affair.”

“Wouldn’t suggest otherwise, pal.” Schwartz circles around Brock at arm’s length. He puts a low, backless couch between them as he slides alongside the ice sculpture. “‘Course you know how to relax.” Schwartz rests a palm on her frosty knee. Glides his hand to the swell of the Madonna’s hip, wet fingers trace up the asset’s ribs. “This how you unwind? A good time, huh, Rumlow?”

Brock keeps his expression vacant. He can match this fucking reptilian. God help him, he’s almost relieved it’s only Schwartz.

“Where’s Dragomirov, huh?” Schwartz continues. “I haven’t heard him complain about the vodka yet.”

“He’s sitting this one out.”

“Mh, getting a weak stomach in his old age.” Schwartz runs his thumb over the plated metal contours of the asset’s muzzle. “Can’t say I much blame him. The selection tonight is mighty rich for simple tastes.”

Brock reminds himself that he has the advantage. He knows why Schwartz is pissed, knows that Schwartz knows he knows. Brock steps around the divan, closer. He has all the cards, he’s the one in control.

“Take this caviar,” Schwartz says. He moves his fingers from the soldier’s pert nipple to the silver tray on its chest. To the nest of blinis surrounded by fanned oyster shells, each filled with different fish eggs as colorful and flawless as beads of glass. Schwartz jabs a bone teaspoon into a pile of fine, black roe. “This species. This species right here is critically endangered due to overharvesting. ‘Critically.’ That’s the highest threat level, right before extinction.” He dumps the spoonful on a crisply folded blini. “I’ll be contacting the hosting staff. Demerits for undermining HYDRA’s commitment to sustainability.”

Half the pastry disappears into his mouth. Schwartz makes a face. “Anyway, you gotta keep this shit chilled. Tastes weird at room temp.” He sets the other half on the asset’s metal shoulder, and the soldier is careful to keep its attention averted from the scrap or any of the platters. The rumbling from its stomach is loud and anguished. It hasn’t been fed all day. The soldier squeezes its eyes shut while Schwartz resumes stroking its throat and jaw. “Too salty,” he muses. “Really fishy and salty, lingers in the mouth. Say–”

He plucks the glass from Brock’s hand and washes the rest of the beer down in one swallow before passing it back. “Thanks.”

The chatter in the rest of the room goes dead. The asset stops shivering, falls utterly still and cracks open its eyes in an unfocused stare that Brock knows is anything but unfocused. It has senses like an animal.

Brock lowers his head under the pretext of setting down the empty glass. The motion allows his peripheral vision to fan back in a wider angle, and catch a glimpse of the maybe dozen and a half figures gathered behind him. The deep crimson smudge of Cross and tall black shape of Rollins are easy to spot on his right, Gutierrez no doubt nearby. Brock doesn’t run with the same crew every mission – a rotating squad of two dozen or so are trimmed or added as needed – but his regulars are united in their steadfast, unconditional hatred of STRIKE Team 3. And STRIKE Team 3 hates his team. He can’t remember why, but.

Pride for his team wells up in him, tempered by embarrassment. As if a brawl were imminent, or even likely. 

Undisciplined men – men prone to unstudied acts of violence – get used up fast on the street. HYDRA gives them a brief purpose, but they’ll never make it to the likes of the Burj’s private ballrooms. This is not how he ends. If Brock gets taken out (when Brock gets taken out), the hit will be meticulous. He won’t get so much as a whiff of it coming until it’s too late, taken from behind without warning. That’s how Brock does it – he figures he deserves no less.

Schwartz watches him patiently. His feeble range of expressions make him a difficult man to read at the best of times, but the fingers he has clamped around the asset’s muzzle have gone white at the knuckles.

It’s a challenge, and the most surprising part is the disappointment. Brock realizes with a start: he’s disappointed in Schwartz. Back when Brock first joined HYDRA… he frowns. When. He can’t remember when, exactly. He was always… Point is, Schwartz’s been part of STRIKE longer than Brock, beat Brock near half to death once when neither of them was much older than Kildare, and here he is pulling this silly bullshit, this frat house posturing. Anger dissolves into a bitter kind of dismay. He’s so tired.

“ _Soldat._ ” 

Schwartz jumps like he’s scalded when the asset’s head swivels in his hands to face Brock. In the absence of Pierce or Dragomirov, it recognizes Brock as its senior handler.

“Get off that thing. On your hands and knees.”

The soldier glances frantically from Brock to the appetizers still balanced on its chest and lap. Of course. It will have been ordered not to disturb them. Brock moves the platters to a side table stocked with lube and folded towels, and the asset slides from the sculpture into a crouch.

Schwartz takes a step back. “The hell you think you’re doing, Rumlow?”

“You wanna get your dick sucked or not?”

The other man regards him with narrow-eyed skepticism. 

“‘Cause I figure that’s where this is headed anyway,” says Brock, “so let’s set aside all the pageantry and pretext before it gives me an ulcer. You don’t like me, I don’t like you. Fine. Just take your damn blowjob or find a willing partner.” 

He arranges the soldier on the divan. It’s near enough that the chain on its collar is still slack where it attaches low on the wall, just below the Virgin’s base. The shifting knobs of its clavicle press against its skin when it drops to all fours. Head down, back straight as a show animal’s. Off the ice but no less on display. It might even be worse now. The Madonna’s newly empty arms are spread over the asset in either supplication or condemnation of the offering before her: _‘Just take a look at this, you assholes. Take a good long look.’_

The soldier is solid and pale as the statue, save for where cold-burns leave angry red marks in the shape of hands across its flesh shoulder and the heavy muscle of its thighs. A curtain of hair almost hides the wet glint of its eyes, huge and intent, fixated on the section of cushion between its splayed hands.

Brock turns to the room. “You know the rules.” He falls into the easy clip of orders. “No expensive damage, nothing permanent, no blood play.” 

The last one earns a hiss from somewhere in the crowd, likely Hodges or Batsaikhan. 

“Fuck off. I’m not going in front of a firing squad because the cleaning lady’s second cousin’s uncle shows up with a vial of the stuff in some Tunisian black market. Hence, therefore, and forthwith, no fuckin’ bloodplay. It’s bad enough with all the other fluids I gotta keep an eye on.” Not to mention having to work with Steve. Barely a year with the guy, and Brock’s lost track of how many adversaries had already tried to steal a sample from Captain America. Jesus. “I don’t care what any of you hotshots think you’re capable of. Every fucking one of you is replaceable. The Soldier is not, so don’t forget it.”

He labors with the ornate mask secured at the asset’s nape. Its straps are even worse than the regular one, which at least doesn’t have so many fiddly bits, and it’s trembling from the cold. Dark hair slips through Brock’s fingers in glossy falls of silk. Washed and layered, moisturized and scented, a package made pretty for the taking apart. 

The poor bastard will be so eager to obey in the first hour – out of its element, confused, desperate to appease through obedience. At least an hour, Brock figures, before curiosity glazes over into limply accepting the next punishment. When the silver plated muzzle finally swings free, what he says is, “ _Bon appétit._ ”

Schwartz is still eying him warily. In hindsight, his constant feigned suspicion had been an effective tactic in directing attention elsewhere. Brock will have to remember that the next time Rogers starts asking questions. 

“Still a little early for me,” Schwartz lies. “I prefer ‘em warmed up and worn in.” Bet you do, creepy fucker. Schwartz takes his time strolling back toward the main ballroom. “You boys start without me,” he calls over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll be around.” 

“That’s what we’re worried about,” Rollins mutters, but the tension drops out of his stance. Brock catches the barely audible clicks of what could be safety pins being switched back on outside the door.

“Now,” he says, pitching his voice long and crisp like he’s running a briefing, “This is threatening to turn anticlimactic. That won’t do.” Brock searches the bystanders. Kildare is keeping his distance from the crowd, his glass clutched in a death grip. “You up to breaking in the asset, rook?”

The kid’s lips go pale. He glances to the door vacated by Schwartz, back to where Brock’s palm rests over the dip in the soldier’s spine. He’s never seen the asset in anything but full battle gear, Brock realizes. Never even glimpsed its face until now.

The Winter Soldier is a thing felt more often than seen. Hard to look at directly, but it radiates a power that makes its presence impossible to ignore. It both draws and repels attention, like an aching cavity. Kildare creeps toward the asset. Without the dampening effect of the armor, he’s struck by the full, naked force of its unnatural life.

Physically, they could be the same age.

By the time Kildare joins Brock beside the divan, his fists are clenched in skittish bravado. “How?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb here,” Brock says, “and assume you’ve had someone else’s mouth around your Johnson.” He let his smile turn unpleasant, daring. “If not, I’m sure you’ve seen pictures. You can figure out the mechanics.” To the kid’s credit, he flinches but doesn’t squeal when Brock cups a rough hand to his crotch and gives him a squeeze. “See? You’re halfway there.”

Kildare’s face goes from bloodless to flushed. He bats Brock’s hand away, earning a rumble of amusement from Rollins, “Who’s breaking in who?”

“I know how to take head,” Kildare snaps. But when he fumbles with his belt he shoots a nervous glance at Cross. God help him.

“Oh, I _am_ takin’ notes,” she crows, “if that’s what you’re wondering.”

He blushes harder when Cross wolf-whistles before he’s even finished pulling himself out. Kildare grabs a chunk of hair at the asset’s crown and cranks its head back. Its pupils are huge and swimming, mouth slack. Pumped full of drugs, Brock thinks. Far from this plane. Still, Kildare hesitates before lowering his cock to rest on its plush lower lip, and this, at least, is a reasonable fear.

The asset always remembers how to do this part. It gets to work immediately. Kildare’s head rocks back in a decent impression of a Pez dispenser, his hips snap forward to fill its throat. “ _God,_ ” he chokes. “Fuckin’… _ah god._ ” The asset is not a creature of moderation. As with all missions, it executes directives with brutal efficiency, risking no half-measures or foreplay. Its cheeks hollow around Kildare’s base, it works his length with an urgency that mimics enthusiasm.

Kildare grabs at it like a man struggling for balance against the tides. His hands are fisted in its thick, clean hair, more to steady himself than the asset. He hauls himself back into coherence.

“This ain’t a proper breaking in yet,” Cross says. “You forgot to pop the soldier over the head with a champagne bottle.”

The kid’s half-lidded eyes snap open.

Brock snorts. “That was a joke.”

“Hmm,” Kildare affirms, falling back into a daze. Fear forgotten in the wet rhythm of its mouth. His own voice joins in breathy little half-moans and cut-off grunts. He starts to curl around the soldier.

“Don’t let it fool you,” Cross purrs. She breaks from the onlookers and saunters closer, close enough to wrap her fingers over one of the asset’s plated ankle cuffs. “Even like this, it’s wily. You’re gonna want to think it’s stupid, but the longer you leave it out of cryo, the more its brain has time to heal. Then you’re really in trouble. By the time you figure out it might even be pretty smart, that’s too late. You could lose a piece.” She clicks her teeth. “Been known to happen.”

Kildare looks back to Brock.

“That,” Brock says, “was not a joke.”

Whatever concerns the kid plans to raise are interrupted by another violent gurgling from the asset’s stomach. Which scares up a few frantic chuckles and a “Don’t leave ‘em waiting, rook!” from the inner circle, but Kildare stares down at it in horror, as if he’s broken through the haze of sex long enough to realize he’s chosen to enter a monster, is in it still.

Brock’s considering his own rejoinder when his jacket buzzes. He discreetly flips his suit open to the inside pocket tucked against his chest, but doesn’t take his phone out. Phones aren’t allowed here. Technically. Letters glow pale green in the cave of his jacket. No sender, not even “unlisted,” just a blank phosphorescent rectangle followed by “SERIAL NUMBERS CONFIRMED AS MATCH.”

For a second he can’t hear anything but the thrum of blood rushing through his ears. Only for a second. Serial numbers from the planted weapons they ‘took’ this morning in the raid. He’s gotten used to this flavor of disappointment, acclimatizes quickly. It’s part of what makes him a good soldier.

He types with his thumb: “Proceed?”

The reply is almost instantaneous. “PROCEED.” 

There used to be a time where moments just happened, when nobody carried little computers that could interrupt your life at a moment’s notice and snuff out pleasure with ice water. Used to be. But what’s the point of nostalgia?

When Brock looks up again, Kildare’s gotten through his crisis of conscience. Powered through like a trooper, seems like. He’s spraddle-legged over the couch with his elbows propped on the asset’s wide shoulders, nails scrabbling at its hips, terror subsumed by the furrows his fingers can make in that pale hard flesh. He’s all but mounted its face, too far stupid with pleasure to care. Kildare whines. Non-regulation bangs fall in a sandy mess across his eyes, and he jackrabbits into the asset’s mouth until his thrusts go erratic.

The asset drains him and keeps pulling. There is no kill here, it has acknowledged no conclusion or completion. Kildare groans, the asset’s belly rumbles an answer.

“Swallow everything.” Gutierrez rests a hand on its muscled calf, gliding in front of Cross. His tone is conversational. “Liquid protein, amino acids, sugars. It’s good for you.”

If it has an aversion to the taste, the asset shows no reaction. It suckles diligently, eager to please. Eager to make sense of this mission. Even when Gutierrez flips the asset onto its back, Brock can see the sinews of its throat working around Kildare’s cock as it continues to give head upside down.

“Jesus!” The kid has to haul himself away, pulling free with an audible break of suction and a cord of spunk and drool connecting him to the asset’s mouth, shoes stumble-catching on the rug’s edge. He tucks himself back in but doesn’t tear his eyes away from the asset, like he’s worried it might leap across the room to get back at his dick.

The way the asset stays fixed on him, deadly-still even while arched backwards over the sofa? Yeah, maybe.

Kildare takes another step back but forces a grin. “Can’t get enough. Happens every time.” He rakes a hand through his hair as the rest of the room laughs and slaps him on the back. Brock just watches, magnanimous. His phone is a brick in his jacket pocket.

Gutierrez stands over the asset, looking thoughtful with his hands resting on its knees. It’s panting a little, drug-bleary but overcompensating with the intensity of a drunkard. Gutierrez parts its thighs like he’s opening a book. The soldier’s soft, uncut dick lazes against the smooth crook of its leg, and how the hell, Brock wonders, does some poor tech get recruited to wax the asset? Though when he imagines it spread open just like this, blue nitrile gloves slicking it up with scented potions and lotions, carefully inspecting the notch of its hips and the cleft of its ass for any flaws, he thinks the assignment might not be much of a punishment.  
Blood rushes downward. Shit. Be cool, Rumlow. Brock adjusts his stance.  
He knows from experience that Gutierrez is going take his sweet time, and since he needs to reinforce squad loyalty tonight, Brock’s going to let him. Even though it’s going to be distracting as hell, because Gutierrez is already feathering strokes over its belly and inner thighs, everywhere but its cock. Light, exploratory brushes that have its skin fluttering like horsehide.  
The asset has been conditioned to withstand tremendous pain, to endure environmental stressors far beyond the human threshold. Torture, war: the steel walls of its training come down, and it suffers behind them.  
Now its eyes stop their roaming and clench shut while Gutierrez worries at its nipples, tugging at them until both stand erect – dusky and swollen and used as its lips. He traces down the midline of its body, and the asset doesn’t make a sound so much as break its pattern of breathing. Calloused thumbs rub circles in every hollow of its pelvis. Its dick begins to lengthen with each heartbeat. It finally wheezes, hitching up a knee, when Gutierrez rolls its testicles together in his palm.  
Gentleness is incomprehensible to the soldier, soft touches are intolerable. It’s through pleasure rather than pain that the asset peeks out from its body’s shutters, revealing itself in gasps and twitches. Which could be interesting, if you’re into that. Brock’s made a study of its behavior like any good field commander, but it’s the asset’s pleasure, not Brock’s, so it isn’t _that_ interesting.

Gutierrez drags its hips toward the edge of the divan that has no armrest. Its fingers stay clenched in the cushions over its head, anchored so its body stretches out with the whisper of flesh sliding over plush fabric.

“Do you gotta go down every single time, Robbie?” says Rollins.

Gutierrez shrugs. He’s slipped off his dress shoes to kneel more comfortably between the asset’s legs. “Every time is the first time. That’s why I like it.”

“Not really what I was asking, but whatever floats your boat, guy.”

Cross shoves in beside Rollins. “Hey, G. I want its mouth if you’re not using it.”

“Nah. Gimme a minute. I need to see.”

Brock’s never known anyone to get off on giving oral as much as Gutierrez. He’d probably happily service Cross next if she wanted. Hell, might drop to his knees for any squad member in a heartbeat – an intriguing thought if not for the possible conflict of interests screwing up team dynamics. And even if Gutierrez didn’t consider it cheating on Karen, the situation could get pretty fucking gay pretty fucking fast. So there’s that.

The asset watches Gutierrez with dull sub-interest, like someone watching a fish tank, but it keeps itself spread as he works it to full hardness. It keeps itself spread and its breathing stutters, and a flush creeps from its cheeks and mouth down to its chest, to the ruddy thickness of its cock. Gutierrez sucks the slick head of it between his lips, and noise escapes the asset as a full-throated moan. 

Its face pinches in fear – a reflex before its expression slackens to the blank despair of unavoidable pain. Then, when the blow doesn’t land, confusion.  
“What…” The asset’s length disappears down Gutierrez, its stunted voice terminates in a gurgle.  
By this point in the festivities the soldier is usually begging for a mission, for a briefing, anything. ( _What is my mission? What is my mission?_ God, does it ever shut up?) But the ice has done a number on it, plus whatever they gave it downstairs to make it stupid. And as far as it knows, this is the first deep-throating it’s ever received in its long life.  
Does this count as life? Assuming life is an unbroken chain of experiences and memory, maybe not. The asset just exists. It exists and chews its lip and struggles to stay motionless. It fails.  
Guests wander in and out, drawn by the ice sculpture or the smell of sex, usually meandering off when they see the asset is occupied; a few linger to shove a hand down their slacks. Brock wonders how he must look to them, him nearly standing at attention at the head of the divan and framed by dripping ice. Like he’s playing the part of the conductor, maybe, or the silverback gorilla. He runs his fingers over the asset’s scalp because it’s something to do, and to hold it down. Sweat dampens its roots, so different from the hair Gutierrez wears buzzed tight against his skull, which is currently bobbing between the asset’s legs. Some fucking day this is turning into.  
Brock blinks hard, then adjusts his presentation to alert-but-bored. He scans the crowd for VIPs or more of Schwartz’s men arriving to make trouble, and he absolutely does not look at the events on the sofa. He can’t not hear it, though. He can’t not be acutely aware of the wet sex noises a few feet away. His ear is drawn to the call and response he’s long-since memorized: low guttural sounds when Gutierrez is sucking the asset’s dick, breathy whines when he’s tonguing at its ass. The asset chirps and twitches like it does when something’s inside it; the way Gutierrez moans in reply, you’d think he was balls-deep instead of using his hands. He marks the asset’s thighs with red bitten crescents that fade within minutes, opens it to lick in deeper around the thrust of his fingers. 

The asset tries to hold back a quavering wail by force. It presses its fists against its jaw in place of the muzzle. 

Gutierrez snaps to alert the moment the soldier covers its face. 

“Get those hands down.” He yanks its nipples for emphasis, hard, then hovers a hand over it like a drone ready to strike. “Now.”

The soldier obeys.

Gutierrez’s snarl uncurls, but there’s a cutting edge in his purr when he promises, “Do that again, and I’ll bite your dick off.” 

“Careful,” Brock murmurs. 

They can’t ugly up the asset so early in the game. Putting all that fancy to waste would be a major faux-pas. Gutierrez says nothing. He would do it. His eyes are too naturally dark to read the state of his pupils, but the asset’s are so dilated Brock can only see a thin ring of mossy blue around the edge. Its sclera are a flawless, healthy white – so white they look fake, like a doll. Brock shudders and looks away. The asset shudders, too. It vibrates under his palm where he’s still touching it – his skin against its scalp, nothing to cover its face– and he can hear it getting eaten out again.

Next time Gutierrez groans, Brock can tell his mouth is full around the soldier. Goddamn this kid loves giving head. Brock’s about to cup himself through his trousers to get a little relief, and it’s damn unprofessional how distracted he is, that he doesn’t notice the guy until he’s practically within arm’s reach on Brock’s nine.

“Hey, uh. Hey. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around? At these things?” A gormless twerp is standing at the edge of the dais. He twirls his pointer fingers around one another in a universal sign for the old switcharoo. “’Cause, like, that’s what I heard it was for, but then here’s this dude sucking its thing, so what am I-”

“ _Fuck. Off._ ” Brock spits.

The twerp backpedals, actually looking offended. “I’m just _asking!_ ”

“You heard him, Robotics.” Cross is all murder and venom, even while she grinds against Jack’s commandeered hand through what looks like eighty layers of fabric. “You don’t know shit about STRIKE. Wait your fuckin’ turn, and where you put your pencil-pushing R&D dick is your own goddamn business.”

If looks could disembowel. The combined glare of STRIKE Team 1 sends Robotics scurrying back to the masses, but not before he throws a final confused glance at Gutierrez, the one agent not paying him any attention.

Gutierrez only has eyes for the soldier. He’s glazed over with greedy anticipation, like whatever happens next belongs to him alone. 

Until he pulls off with a wet pop and wipes his chin. “Hey,” he waves at Kildare. “Pass me my plate?”

Kildare wrinkles his forehead, but he puts the saucer in Gutierrez’s outstretched hand.

“Thanks, man.” Gutierrez balances the china on the soldier’s stomach. Three petit-fours are left on the plate. They’re those perfect tiny pastel cakes with fondant icing so smooth it looks airbrushed on, and they sway with each flex that ripples down its body, like survivors set adrift on a porcelain life raft. 

Brock doesn’t even pretend he’s not staring as Gutierrez nips at its foreskin. The asset bucks in increasing distress around the four fingers pumping inside it, against the thumb pressed just behind its balls, now drawn tight against its body and ready to pop any moment. Gutierrez swirls his tongue around its frenulum – the head of its cock throbbing and nearly purple from want – and watches intently as the asset’s mouth drops open for one pure moment, then its teeth clamp back down around a rusty howl. The upholstery on the divan gives way under its fingers. Fabric bursts, and it’s coming, frenzied and spurting in streaks across its belly. Its right leg shakes out a few sporadic kicks. Gutierrez stays locked on, and he milks out an impressive amount of fluid as the asset goes to pieces, then keeps going.

“Shit,” breathes Rollins, giving voice to all their thoughts.

Gutierrez appears unmoved, save for two spots of color high on his cheeks, which is close as he gets to chest-beating conquest. He sits back on his heels and surveys his work.

The asset is puddled across the divan. All that limp, draped muscle dwarfs the sofa, and at the center of it is the absurd little plate of cakes, freshly glazed in ejaculate. Brock figures it’s the kind of fucked-up dish that would fit right in with the rest of HYDRA’s exclusive event menu. Coffee, tea, super-soldier jizz? Sure, here you go. But then Gutierrez stands over the asset and finishes himself off with three strokes and a soft grunt, adding his own contribution to the saucer. 

Brock says, “What.”

Gutierrez tilts his head. “Protein, remember?” He wipes off excess lube onto the soldier’s sprawled legs. “Accelerated metabolism. Must be starving for it, can’t let it go to waste.” He lifts the saucer with one hand and nudges the asset with the other, urging it upright. Gutierrez sets the petit-fours at the edge of the divan and coos, “It’s good for you.” Its collar chain jingles as the asset crawls forward. Despite being wobbly from the only orgasm it can remember, the soldier eagerly laps up its meal, then licks the plate clean. 

Gutierrez slips his shoes back on and casually returns the saucer to a side table.

On the other side of the dais, Cross goes into rapture like she just watched David Blaine do some wild shit on the street. “G! Fuckin’ G.” She can’t keep her hands still. The glitter of bad intentions is back full-force. “You are a genius, my man. An artist, a legend in your own time. Actually, hold that thought.” Cross rustles toward the main dining hall. “I’m feeding it next,” she sparkles.” I call the mouth! I call dibs. Rollins, kill any line-jumpers.”

“No.”

“Fine, then _I_ will.” 

After nearly taking out some grandpa for blocking the door, she’s gone for less than a minute, and Brock’s surprised when she doesn’t come back with something covered in spines or armor to force on the soldier, some of the “mini lobsters” or whatever they are. (Langostinos? No, he’s pretty sure that’s some kind of shrimp, maybe.) Instead, it’s a plug of meat about twice the size of his thumb. Golden brown, little chicken legs sticking out behind it and a round beaked skull on the other end. Ugh. It’s one of those songbirds they force-feed grain before drowning it in brandy. You know a recipe is next level bad when goddamn French cuisine outlaws it. Outstanding.

Cross plunks the dish down on the lube table and strips out of her pantyhose. “Good thing I had time to shave,” she says as she shimmies over the divan’s low arm by the soldier’s head. 

“Yeah,” says Brock. “Thank God.”

She flips him the bird with the hand that isn’t hitching up her dress. Brock shoots her back a grin. He has to circle around to the side of the sofa to get out of the way, putting his back to the ice sculpture. This position makes him even more conspicuous – he’d be the focal point of the room if not for the asset spread before him – and the attention grates against both training and his instincts. Tell the truth, Brock’s not fond of that frosty monstrosity looming over his back either. But he’s got a full view of the rest of the room, and the blocking frames him as a figure of authority. 

It’s where Pierce would stand. He’s have his hands tucked into his suit, weight relaxed on one leg and that bored grandfatherly expression where he pretends he doesn’t know everyone is keeping an eye on him. Easy enough for Brock to imitate. He’s present but not there, like the sculpture behind hm.

The asset is pale and sweating, still on all fours from when it lapped up its meal, so it’s simple enough for Cross to reach out and haul it forward. “Enough rest, time to put that pretty mouth back to work.” She keeps her tone conversational, but pitches her voice to share with the rest of the crowd. “A soldier can’t live off cock alone. Don’t you wanna taste something different? There, there you go.”

She cuts herself off with a low moan when its mouth meets her, bending over the asset as it begins eating her out in earnest. It’s intent on lapping her folds apart, its shoulders flex with each long, firm sweep of its tongue. “Yesss. Fucking finally,” Cross hisses. “Yeah, there you go, puppy-dog.” Her hands clench in its hair. The techs ought to just outfit the asset with a bridle next time. 

A shiver runs through her, and she nods back up. Takes a moment to focus her eyes before she reasserts a leer, all dark red lips and incandescent with mischief. “Mm, but you know,” she makes a show of surveying the room, “I do like to come around a dick.” Cross tilts her head at Brock in a silent question. When he flattens his mouth, her grin sharpens. “Hey Kildare, you pitching another tent already? Kids these days.”

“All those hormones in their processed chicken nuggets,” says Gutierrez, like he isn’t the second most junior agent and only three years older than Kildare.

“Whatever. You gonna share?” Cross asks.

Kildare nods idiotically. 

“Then get in, but put on a rubber first. And you better not pop off as fast this time around.”

“No, ma’am! I can go a lot longer on account I already came.”

The kid’s hustling to unwrap a condom when Cross turns to give the rest of the team a wicked grin. She’s looking entirely too pleased with herself until Brock mouths _‘Ma’am.’_ Cross scowls and hoists both middle fingers.

She bunches her dress around her hips, snapping a warning about not staining it, and folds one leg under her on the divan so she can keep the asset pressed against her clit while Kildare enters from behind. She guides Kildare to her cunt and the asset’s lips to Kildare, lets it slick their joining with the working of its needy mouth. Lets its tongue bathe the stretch of her flesh around Kildare when he bottoms out. Cross’ running commentary dissolves into gasps by the time she starts rutting against both of them.

Kildare’s so flushed Brock is having doubts about his promise to make it for the long haul, but the kid seems distracted enough that it might work. He keeps doing hover-hands over Cross’ waist, eventually settling on holding up the folds of her dress in parody of a curtsy – not quite touching her, and he won’t have to pay for her dry-cleaning if he keeps the fabric out of the way.

“I’ll tell ya,” Cross pants. “Know who else likes to come around a dick? My pussy-loving pet, here.” She rakes four angry welts down the soldier’s back. The asset groans into her, sopping wet by the sound of it. “Don’t be fooled by this high level cuntwork going on, boys, its full potential is going unfulfilled.”

“More like un _filled,_ huh?” Rollins snickers. “In the _ass_ et.” At least three people boo him.

Brock shakes his head in disgust. “Just for that, it’s gonna be you, Rollins.”

“The hell? I wasn’t volunteering!”

Is he shitting Brock? “You’re shitting me. Literally no one has fucked it yet, so you’ll be the pioneer of pristine, un-sloppy territory. I thought you’d _like_ that, you pedant.” He flicks Jack’s ear. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Didn’t say I wasn’t going to do it,” Rollins grumbles, maneuvering behind the asset. “And I’m not weird about going in after.” Except Jack’s always been weird about touching other dudes’ jizz, so he ought to be over the moon about getting first round. 

This motherfucker rolls on a condom anyway.

“ _Jesus Christ,_ Rollins, what more do you want?” 

“It’s still not hygienic.” 

“You know they clean it out six ways to Sunday,” he says, because Jack already knows it can’t incubate disease. “Just look at it.” Brock gestures at the silver plated cuffs and collar, the soldier’s waxed and ostentatiously manicured ass.

“And frankly,” adds Cross, “that’s rude. Our soldier does all this hard work, and you won’t even give it a direct deposit.” She lights up. How is she even talking, humping its face like that. “Hey. Suppose we fill it from both ends, how much jizz you think the asset needs to remain operational, volume-wise?”

Rollins gives her a withering look. “Gross.”

Cross laughs. Kildare manages to squeeze out a weird giggle against her shoulder. No way is he going to outlast Cross.

The asset’s hole is already shiny with lube, but Rollins slathers on more. And the move is maybe a little prissy of him, but truth is the asset is notoriously tight before it gets broken in. Like, to the point of being difficult to even enter. (But how, Brock wonders, how is it still this early in the night? That the thing hasn’t been fucked open yet.)

Regardless, when Rollins mounts it, he slides in easy as Cinderella into a glass slipper. “Holy sh–!” He has to lay across its back for a moment to catch his bearings. The asset squeaks and jerks away from the intrusion. Or ruts against it. Hard to tell.

“Okay, damn.” Rollins struggles upright. “Can’t believe you got it so open and ready with your mouth, Robbie. I mean, it’s still squeezing like fuck, but damn.”

“No problem, man.” Gutierrez is camped by the discarded caviar. He’s apparently decided it doesn’t violate his restricted calorie rules, nor does he share Schwartz’s qualms about exact serving temperatures. 

Rollins mutters something in response. He squints into the middle distance while he adjusts to the pressure. And waits. Brock’s about to say something when Rollins begins to stir at last: rocking slow, in increments. The asset responds stiffly, white with tension in the few parts of it not padded with sinew – hips and knuckles, knees and brow – all the places where its skin lay thin and close to the bone. It looks so heavy, so at odds with the small sounds pushed out of it. 

Brock wonders how much of the noise is voluntary. Anal stimulation can trigger a gasping reflex, but the asset has been trained to perfect silence when required. They can do anything to its body without drawing so much as a peep. Maybe it’s the drugs loosening its tongue and dampening its inhibitions, because the whimpers pick up as Rollins increases his pace. Louder, needy. Maybe that’s just its nature. 

Maybe it was always like this. Because it always starts cold, doesn’t it? Cold and stubborn, but it never ends that way. Soon enough it’s snuffling and sobbing again, rolling eager into human contact, slobbering into Cross while Rollins’ hips pop against its thighs, like it’s searching for something with that beastly stamina. When it gets riled like this, the asset’s hunger won’t subside until things get truly ugly. They will.

But not yet. It’s early, and Cross keeps the asset running hot; she slaps it into life, rakes it bloody. “More,” she rasps. Her nails are an uncertain color between red and black. Must have done them in her room, Brock thinks hazily as he watches Cross bury them in the asset’s hair and nape. 

“ _More._ Make me feel it, goddamn you. Eat that pussy.” The asset complies. Cross folds over to bare her teeth against its ear, but doesn’t lower her volume "Yeah, you love it, and you don’t even know. Dontcha? Almost as much as you love taking it. That cock feels so good in you, huh, puppy?"

“Mother of Christ,” Brock’s voice comes out hoarser than he intended. “What’d I say about rhetorical questions?”

“They’ll make the asset _confused._ ” She drags it up by the scalp until its face hangs between her thighs like the world’s most morbid marionette. Empty eyed with hooded lids and full, curved dripping mouth. Nothing there to be confused. Cross shrugs up at Brock, all mock-innocence. 

“Fuck off, you know what I mean. Cut out that extraneous shit.” And, because he’s not really mad, “Typical over-achiever. You could have just said you want to see it get fucked.”

“Yeah?” She bats her eyes and pulls the asset back in. “I wanna see it get fucked.” Her deadpan is ruined by whatever the soldier is doing downstairs, because Cross pull an amazing mug when it licks her back open. Brock wishes he had a camera. Or was allowed to actually pull his phone out. 

She’s riding its face now, cranking the asset’s neck back at an uncomfortable-looking angle. If it weren’t enhanced, Brock might worry Rollins and Cross are going to telescope it between them, but even now it manages to make the bow of its spine graceful as a stroke of calligraphy. 

“Aah, hah. Fff- _shit!_ ” Cross runs through a series of curses so elaborate she has to switch to Arabic and German. “Kildare, I swear to God!” She growls at the kid behind her. “If you don’t stop changing your angle, I will go praying mantis on your ass, then use your turgid corpse as a dildo. I am trying to fuckin’ multi-task here, and you’re not helping. There.” Her right thigh spasms. “ _Haaahh_. There, right there. Now _hold._ Hold that exact spot…” 

She flexes up and away from Kildare until his dripping dick pops free. With one hand, she guides the asset’s chin until it’s slavering around his length. Caresses it nice this time, says, “Wet him up for me, puppy-dog.” The asset wets him up. Kildare groans into the hair fallen loose at her nape. The soldier’s tongue washes again and again over the head of his cock, dutifully following him back to her cunt as Cross sinks down an inch at a time. “ _Fuck._ ” She purrs a litany: “Mmm. Fuck fuckity _fuck._ ” Brock can see how full she is, the asset’s tongue flicking around her stretched lips and swollen clit. Lapping at every sensitive fold while Kildare strokes and fills her inside.

Cross shivers. Draws an arm across her face to flick the sweat from her eyelashes. “Jack it off a little, huh, Rollins?”

“Nuhn,” Rollins slurs.

“C’mon.” Cross runs one palm from its shoulder to the taut meat of its chest. Farther down its body, the asset’s cock has plumped back up against its belly. “Just a couple jerks.”

“What the hell for?” Once he’s committed to something, Rollins always gets snappish at distractions.

“I’m gonna feed it next!”

“Then you do it.”

“I can’t reach,” Cross pouts, and the pout is a bit of theater, but she’s flushed and out of breath enough to look truly at a loss, so Rollins obliges.

He’s barely grazed the asset’s dick when it startles on reflex. Rollins snaps upright at the same time, a shout punched out of him that tells Brock how hard the asset must be clenching internally. It’s rare to see Jack sent reeling like this. He’s got both hands anchored on the arches of the soldier’s pelvis, but a stiff wind could blow him over.

When Rollins steadies himself enough to reach back around, the tumble into wild fucking is quick and dirty. Strip away the vaulted ceilings and chiffon, and the scene’s as lewd as any skin flick Brock ever sneaked through a veil of static in some shitty hotel room. The soldier eats into Cross; sloppy, frenzied, throwing its upper body into the sweeps of its mouth, the rippling muscle of its back like an extension of its tongue. She urges it on, spitting whatever filth comes to her mind as Kildare fucks her, until the percussion of curses and slaps and rustling expensive cloth drowns the din of conversation from the rest of the room. 

He knows she’s coming for real when she finally goes quiet – her cherry-black mouth drops open as if in pain, but no sound comes out. 

When her lungs come back online Cross yowls like she’s enraged, grinds down with her jaw set and sinewy arms flexed in a death grip, going to battle with the soldier’s face between her legs. And, Brock would never admit it aloud, but Cross is a handsome enough woman most of the time. For a few, furious moments that doesn’t change. She doesn’t become beautiful in the throes of passion, but Brock is impressed by the scene. Reminds him of something the ancients would have memorialized on cave walls. He shares the thrill of a teammate’s excellence on the field, is proud that in the arena of war, STRIKE represents the finest. What’s better than the best fucking the best? 

Cross makes a production of drawing out her orgasm, making up for lost noise with the asset’s lips around her clit as she squeezes Kildare, who looks a wreck, but, miracle of miracles, has managed not to blow his load. Unbelievable. 

After two minutes of writhing through the aftershocks, Cross slides off her perch with a satisfied hum and uses one of the complementary towels to sop up the slick between her legs. She rolls into a full-body stretch that tumbles down the bunched folds of her dress.

“Hey, uh.” Kildare presses against the base of his dick. “I didn’t. Yet.”

“Oh, yeah.” Cross glances down at him, then shifts her bodice back up to cover her chest. “Congrats on doing the minimum required of you. You wanna cookie?” She scoffs. “Make another direct deposit if you’re feeling generous.”

She folds into a lazy sit beside the divan. “Cause you’re still hungry, ain’tcha, pretty pooch? You’re _aching_ for it.” 

One hand pets circles over the asset’s rumbling belly, the other twists a nipple until it whimpers. “If you want to eat, you gotta come.”

The asset drops its head and grinds into Rollins’ thrusts. When Cross sets the saucer beneath the table of its limbs, it turns its head away, panting and swallowing the rush of saliva triggered by the scent of food – meat its body requires.

Cross rubs her thumb over its leaking slit. She’s still blushed down past her neckline. “You need to come for me, pup.” 

The asset is shaking now. “ _Please,_ ” it moans. It rocks back and forth in the compulsive tempo of anxiety rather than lust. Drips more precum. “This directive isn’t – can’t. Can’t come. Already _here._ ”

The crowd explodes into laughter. Of course it does. The burst of amusement jangles Brock’s nerves, but as it drags on, their frantic giggling drains the knot of tension that had been shadowing the room since Shwartz and his crew first rolled in. 

The asset does not share their relief. Wide shoulders bunch and it curls further in on itself until it’s staring at the erection that hangs heavy between its thighs, its forehead lined in confusion. Shame. And pleasure. Simple, stupid pleasure and too much stimuli. Its lashes flutter shut.

“Now, you know that ain’t what I mean. I said, _come on,_ ” Cross commands. She swivels her fist around the head of its cock, and this time it obeys. Cross jerks it until it spills soft involuntary trills – more sound than they could ever coax from it with a beating. The asset clamps down around Rollins, and just like that they’re coming and lurching together, the asset crying out while Rollins looks a dying martyr. 

“Fuck it all the way through, Jack,” Cross breathes. “I want the whole serving. Give me everything.” 

The flush spreads from its face, spilling down its back in a cape. White skin goes rosy under her claw marks until the red of pleasure and pain disappear into one another, and the asset sinks to its elbows as Rollins pounds every drop from its prostate.

Kildare follows. He’s rolled off the condom, but he’s afraid to touch the asset directly again and most of his orgasm dribbles onto the divan. The flecks he manages to get on the soldier’s face are lapped up immediately. It keeps its mouth parted for more, until it is allowed to feed.

Brock’s suit is becoming uncomfortably warm, even with the ice behind him radiating cold from the back of his scalp to his calves. The contrast is feverish. He watches Cross drag the asset back up to all fours so she can fish the plate out from beneath it. He’d forgotten about the stupid morsel of a bird. At Cross’ order, the asset lowers its mouth to the saucer like a giant housecat. It devours the bunting whole, still wet with its own seed, no change in expression. The first bite releases a rich honeyed-brandy-bloody scent Brock can almost taste. 

The aroma is nauseating. He’s close enough to hear tiny bones crunch between the soldier’s jaws, and feels outside of himself. Like he’s watching a movie. The blissed-out way the soldier licks the porcelain clean after makes him feel disoriented and a little ill, that something so basic and grounding as sex could be infected with so much bullshit. Brock abruptly loses interest. Actually feels his dick wilt. 

His nape itches with the clammy sweat he’s been threatening to break into for half the night, but his queasiness looks like boredom from below. Or it probably does to any bystander that cares to notice beyond their rush to stick something in the asset next. Hide weakness. Order through pain. Brock pretends to focus while blurry agents make the Eiffel tower over HYDRA’s most infamous assassin. Boost team morale, get those endorphins pumping with the old wobbly H.

Rollins comes to stand at Brock’s shoulder once he’s got his suit and hair back in order. That’s good. Rollins will catch anything Brock might miss while he’s getting his shit together. He’s just tired, is all. What Brock wants most is to curl up in designer sheets on a mattress that cost more than his first car. But not right now. He closes his eyes for a second, exhales slow through his nose. Refocuses from sex to power. 

Right now he’s in charge, he’s the center of the room. He’s watching eight hands with a minimum combined 200 hours of field experience pin the weapon, their weapon, by the throat and wrists and hips and ankles and shoulders. It’s making noises; they choke it quiet. He’s frustrated and he’s hungry, he’s fucking it, he’s not even touching it but he’s fucking showing it, he’s the man.

Until a soft voice says: “Attention, _Soldat._ ”

The asset stands. It unfolds and rises just like that, so effortless, shrugging off every hold. Bodies fall off of it and out of it like chaff in the breeze. Brock follows its attention to the doorway.

Alexander Pierce does his sunshine smile. 

The asset melts. It cringes. Brock can relate.

There’s a woman on Pierce’s arm. She releases his elbow to stride ahead in a floor-length ivory gown, familiar in a way Brock can’t quite place. She’s clearly older than Brock, but she’s kept her hair dark chestnut and her arms tight above the strapless bodice that clings to her waist before flowing out into a full, queenly skirt. Each whisper of fabric sounds like money. As usual, Pierce hangs back and takes his time, preferring to see what others do first. Watching, calculating. His companion, however, marches across the room like someone who expects to be accommodated. She isn’t wrong. The sea of black suits parts for her like she’s Moses.

She walks right up to the soldier and gives it a long look. Brock takes a step to the side to get a better view: this petite, mature woman in her white satin and pearls – cat-boned wrists and five and a half feet at most in her heels – staring up at the hulking, naked expanse of the Winter Soldier – chained and cuffed in silver, muscle shining with sweat, lube, spit, and spent come. 

After a moment of study, she beams. “Oh, this is excellent.”

“Yes?” Pierce strolls up behind her, and by now all of the agents have fallen into attention. “I’m so happy it pleases you.”

“Always.” Still smiling, she circles the soldier, inspecting it by running the tips of her fingers across its jaw, its collar, the twin dimples over its buttocks. “Unbelievable,” she says. “Hasn’t aged a day.”

“Neither have you, Madame Ambassador,” says Pierce, which explains how Brock recognizes her. Diplomatic immunity, and – if the rumors are true – a queen of the Hellfire Club.

The Ambassador snorts. “Except I’m a grandmother now.” She tests the soldier’s half-hard cock against her palm. “Please. We both know exactly how old I am, Secretary. It’s right there on my Wikipedia page.”

“Regardless, your presentation is always fantastic.” 

“Well, yes. But I’ll give some of the credit to my personal trainer.”

Pierce’s laugh has half the room grinning automatically. Actual expressions of pleasure, not the cheerless rictus they use on one another. Even Brock feels his eyes crinkle. Brock, who knows Pierce as much or more than any of them.

The Ambassador is laughing too when she locks eyes with him over the asset’s shoulder. “Excuse me, dear. Rumlow, isn’t it?”

He’s been in the game too long to blink, but what the fuck. Brock nods. Mouth parched.

Her smile is beatific. “Wonderful. Rumlow. Could you hand me one of those flutes on the table behind you? A pink one, please. I’m running a little dry.”

Brock turns around, and sure enough, one of the many trays orbiting the ice sculpture is lined with champagne flutes bubbling in amber and pink. He likes to think he can be pretty smooth when he turns up his game, but he might as well be a bumbling, pimply sophomore when he passes her the stem of a fresh glass. Her fingers brush his in the exchange, and her nail varnish matches the champagne so perfectly it’s uncanny. Then she _winks_ at him. His face goes hot. 

The Ambassador turns her attention back to the asset. Its hips twitch involuntarily when she strokes over the scarred seam of its enhancement. “Hmm. ‘The perfect soldier, more obedient than any man,’” she recites. “Well, that’s certainly true, if not very difficult.”

“Don’t be a chauvinist, dear Catherine.”

“Tch – don’t you pout at me, dear Secretary. I’m being sincere. You’re not. All this art, all this power, and yet…” She walks her fingers up the silver chain to its throat. “HYDRA’s first instinct is to mold every masterpiece into a _weapon._ What a stunning lack of creativity.”

Pierce isn’t pouting anymore. “Violence is its nature.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment.” The Ambassador scratches under its chin, as if it weren’t a head taller and stark naked. And damn if the soldier doesn’t lean into her touch. “You’re a great sweet creature, aren’t you?” she coos. “Big sweetie?” 

Brock wonders if seeing the soldier rip a living man’s jaw off a few hours earlier might alter her opinion. He doubts it. 

“All the things I could command the Fist of HYDRA to do,” she says, “and what I want most, I think, is to sit on that sweet face.”

Brock moistens his lips. Yes, this has to happen. Except then he glances down at the divan, stained with everything coating the soldier and more. Dandelion puffs of upholstery float where the asset’s fingers have punctured the velvet cushion over and over. 

“This isn’t quite the queen’s chair you deserve,” Pierce says, because he’s looking too. He sees what Brock sees, and he sees what Brock sees next.

There’s a loveseat against Pierce’s nearest wall, containing one Agent Graves (Almost: Graves is crouched in front of it like the goblin he is, high as absolute fuck – a detail which will no-doubt be documented by superiors), and one ermine throw. Throw is an understatement; this thing could probably cover a King size mattress. Brock can’t quite picture an ermine beyond that they’re long-bodied and rodent-y, but not a rodent. More like a weasel. Whatever they are in the flesh, he’s looking at what must be hundreds of their pale, silky skins.

Ever gallant, Pierce drapes one end of the throw over his arm and drags it toward the sofa, even though all that fur must be heavy as shit. Graves is too strung-out to notice when the expanse of ermine flops over him, and he briefly becomes the lone inhabitant of the world’s most luxurious blanket fort. While Pierce arranges the throw on the divan, Brock makes himself useful by wiping down the asset with a complimentary heated towel so it doesn’t spread any second-hand mess.

Soon as the asset’s passably clean, Pierce has it sinking into the folds of ermine with a gesture. Not a verbal command, just a gesture. An eloquent motion of the wrist and expression and stance that the asset is a hundred times more receptive to than Brock’s hands on its flesh. Not for the first time, Brock swallows a rush of frustration and admiration. Pierce has the attention of the asset, the room, Catherine.

She covers her mouth while considering the spread. “Mars in furs.” Her eyes sparkle like a schoolgirl’s. “I love it.” 

The Ambassador steps out of her heels, curls her pedicured toes into the Burj carpet, and does a little wiggle that Brock thinks is cute until a scrap of lace puddles around her ankles. The sheer bundle is startlingly black against her full white skirts, and she steps out of her panties as dainty as a gazelle. 

And it’s just. He wasn’t expecting it, is all. Which is phenomenally stupid of him. His dick is back on board, then she grabs his elbow for balance, and it’s a hundred times worse as she maneuvers herself down onto the divan and the asset and the furs, and he feels her grip through the worsted wool of his jacket and the cotton of his suit, down to the tender skin between bicep and forearm. The Ambassador’s dress spreads around her like creeping frost. The folds cover everything until the picture is almost demure: she, upright as a dancer, champagne flute lifted up and away; the recent filth of the divan disguised under drapes of fur; the asset’s limbs and silver cuffs barely peeking beyond her gown.

“ _Oh._ ” Her lips part and her eyes flutter shut. Daydreamy. She might be listening to a symphony, perched on the edge of her theater’s Legacy Box seat and caught up in the swell of the orchestra, except her breath catches again. She shifts slightly. Shifts again, a subtle redistribution of weight like she’s simply crossing her legs. Except she’s not crossing her legs, and she keeps doing it, because she’s rocking her hips against its mouth, furtive grinding that doesn’t even rustle her dress. Her next sigh is not quite a moan, just a crackling on the inhale. Fuck. Only a few minutes ago he saw how ravenous it was for Cross’ pussy. 

“ _Ah._ ” How hungry it must be now, under crinoline and silk, hot mouth working like a lathe. But she breathes so slow and measured, wrapping the couch in the warm weight of her control. In through the nose, out through the mouth, Mona Lisa serenity while she’s getting eaten out like a goddamn Sundae. Brock stares at the slip of black lace still crumpled on the floor. If he closes his eyes, he can pick out a hint of cut-apple smell: the starchy-sweetness of female arousal.

The Ambassador – Catherine – takes a sip of pink from her flute and leans forward, bracing herself on her free hand. She smooths down her skirts a few times, then squeezes a fistful of the fabric. Strokes over the material again, and keeps grabbing at the silk until she’s kneading it as slow and indulgent as a spoiled show-cat. Something more substantial than her skirts catches under her palm. She’s feeling the soldier up, massaging its dick through all those satiny layers. 

Brock shifts his weight to one leg so he’s not quite at parade rest. He’s aware of the muted conversation and crystal chiming around the buffet spread, and the gravity of Pierce by the wall to his left, but most of his attention has tunneled to the Ambassador’s little gasps and the slide of fabric as the asset bathes her sex.

She never speeds up or goes off-rhythm, but eventually her face floods pinker than her champagne, spots of color burning high on her cheekbones. Brock’s seen plenty of agents take their orgasm with ferocity – bared teeth, hard-browed and grimacing. The Ambassador meets it soft. Her expression smooths over as she shudders. Her mouth opens, lax and gentle as a sleepwalker. Inhale, exhale, and keep going. The velvety composure of it all. She should teach yoga, Brock thinks after a couple minutes. He feels calmer just from watching her come long and hard on the asset’s tongue.

The Ambassador rides it out while she finishes her drink. She’s in no hurry. 

When she’s had her fill, she hands Brock her empty flute before climbing off the divan, this time with Pierce’s assistance, and the asset stays where it’s been put. Inky hair webs across its face. Snow White melted into the furs, panting from its red, red mouth. Wet and red as its dribbling cock. 

Catherine sips some water, pats a few loose strands back into place. “Mmmh. It’s been too long. Since the second Chechen War, I think. I shouldn’t have spaced out our little visits so much.”

Pierce traces the hidden zipper of her bodice without quite touching it. “Next time there’s a deployment, I’ll be sure to let you know where we are in town.”

“Well. If it’s that simple, I always know someone or other who needs killing.” 

“It’s a date, then.” 

“No need to stage a production just yet. I _will_ be here all week.” She lowers her lashes to half-mast. An afterglow looks good on her. “You should visit my suite.” 

“Oh?” 

“It’s fabulous. They’ve given me an Olympic-sized bathtub, and I want to see the Fist of HYDRA in it.” Catherine crooks a finger at the asset. It’s standing at attention in a fraction of a second, and she isn’t shy about raking her eyes over every naked inch of it. “Oh yes. Very much so. And with bubbles, lots of bubbles and oils. When it’s a blushing virgin for me all over again, then we’ll see what twelve settings of tub jets can do.”

“However.” She slips back into her heels, then turns to Pierce and straightens his already perfect tie. “If I don’t leave now, I’m going to be late for Aida.” Catherine brushes away his elbow before he can offer himself as escort. “I’ll see myself out, wouldn’t want to tear you away from the petting zoo.” 

“Meet me for drinks after the final act?” 

“Of course.” The Ambassador trails a fingertip down the soldier’s midline and gives its dick a few playful tugs. Its erection slaps against its belly when she lets it go, leaving a slick coin of precum shining under its navel. (Brock doesn’t like that the asset is marked by something so human as a bellybutton. It’s weird.) She tucks a lock of sweat-dark hair behind its ear. “Keep the light on for me, sugar.” 

The soldier presses its face into her touch, hazy-eyed, but she’s already gone. Her dress fans out when she pirouettes towards the main ballroom, folds swishing in a satisfied gait when parts the crowd for a second time, and she doesn’t look back at the asset or Pierce, not once.

To Brock’s horror, Kildare clears his throat. Pierce’s eyes flick to him like he’d turn the kid to stone if it were possible. Good sense never slowed Kildare down before. “Uh, Madame forgot her underwear. Sir.”

The lacy black scrap is still abandoned on the carpet, but Pierce keeps his Medusa stare fixed on Kildare. “I assure you she did not, Agent.” He pulls at his collar, skewing the perfect full Windsor. “The Ambassador never forgets anything.” Pierce sets his untouched champagne flute down with the rest and evaluates the harder stuff, as if he ever chooses anything but the best bourbon on the table. 

The asset has gone very still. It flinches at the crystal chime of Pierce stoppering the decanter, but keeps its head down like a guilty mutt, its loose-limbed flush drained away, erection flagging.

Pierce takes his time fussing over the character and aroma of the whiskey before settling into the loveseat behind Graves – still crouched on the floor – who he spares as much attention as he would an ottoman. He crosses his ankle over one knee like he plans to stay for a while. 

“You’ve done well, sweetheart,” Pierce tells the asset. “You’ve been so nice for our lady guest, you deserve something nice, too. Hmm? Something pretty for my pretty pet.” He meets Brock’s gaze and holds it a few seconds past comfort. And here comes a smile Brock hates. “Don’t you agree, Rumlow?”

Brock responds with the minimum nod required.

“Wonderful.” Pierce lifts his drink toward the crumpled pair of panties. “Dress the asset, please.”

Brock knows his face betrays nothing. He’s far from thrilled by the barely concealed orders, but unlike Kildare, he knows when to keep his fucking ideas to himself and his mouth shut. Either way, playing dress-up won’t be the strangest thing that happens tonight, and he really doesn’t feel like examining the surge of warmth that drops down his spine when he stoops to pick up the Ambassador’s underwear, then another spike when he feels the faintly damp spot at its crotch, or so he imagines. 

He kneels behind the asset before his reaction becomes obvious. It lifts one foot after the other through the leg holes when Brock taps its ankles, careful so the lace doesn’t catch on the silvery cuffs or the D-rings for extra chain attachments, so they can hobble or hogtie or spread the asset if they wish. Just like prepping for a mission, Brock tells himself. Keep it businesslike. Except unlike the soldier’s body armor, the delicate fabric is already pulling taut when it’s barely above its knees, and who is he kidding? There’s no way to pretend dressing HYDRA’s finest cyborg assassin in panties is “just business,” not without looking like a complete asshat. 

Change of tactics. Brock shoots an amused glance at his teammates – ain’t this some shit? – and plays up the reverse strip-tease. He tugs up the underwear nice and slow, mostly because he’s afraid it will rip if he goes any faster. The elastic band strains over the soldier’s thighs, lace stretching across more muscle than it was meant to contain. Brock has to spread his palms flat over its haunches and shimmy the fabric up bit by bit, mimicking how he’s seen ladies put on hosiery. The asset stares at the carpet throughout, and Brock is 100% okay with that. At least it’s not clammy anymore. The silky base material is stronger than it looks – the panties stretch over the generous swell of the soldier’s ass until the fabric goes translucent, but it never tears. When Brock’s done, the asset is wearing a lace-patterned shadow that pins its cock against the cut of its hip. The delicacy of the garment only emphasizes the bulk it barely contains, somehow more obscene now than when it was dripping and naked.

Pierce takes a sip of bourbon and rolls it around in his mouth, watching the asset with a detached interest that could mean anything. After a moment he clicks his tongue and says, “Stack for show.” 

The phrase is nothing to Brock, but the asset is off its feet in a shot. It plants its hands at the head of the divan and vaults up onto the pile of furs to lands on all fours, profile turned to Pierce: back straight, shoulders and hips squared, head and chest pressed forward. It’s trembling a bit from stress, jerks once in a full-body spasm, then falls back into an unfocused state. Brock wonders how long the sedation will last. If they pace it right, by the time the drugs leave its system it will already be so intoxicated by overstimulation as to make little difference. One stupor replaced by another. Maybe.

Pierce sighs and climbs out of the loveseat. He endures the four strides required to reach the divan and untangles the chain tangled around the asset’s stilted forearms. The links unfurl to a graceful loop, then he takes a short length in hand and pulls the collar high on the base of the asset’s skull, lifting its face. “Head straight.” He looks at Brock. “You see? Control the head, control the body. The body remembers.”

He darts his eyes from Brock’s face to his hand. Brock takes the chain, proud that he gets Pierce’s subtle vocabulary. Like they’re peers, like they’re natural leaders communicating on the same wavelength. And sour, because Brock obeys as easily as the asset. The asset keeps its head straight.

“Establish a pattern,” Pierce murmurs. Just for him. “And you’ll be able to spot irregularities in an instant. Develop an instinct for consistency.” His touches are light, probing at the asset’s jawline, spine, hocks. Reaffirming conformation. “You’re going to want to reason your way through handling it. Don’t. Logic will only get you so far. Intuition,” he says, “is a subconscious response to subtlety, to changes too small to register otherwise. A survival tool from when we were still being hunted on the plains. Learn to respect that. Listening to the itch in your brain can mean the difference between a successful mission and the slaughter of ’74.”

Pierce never grabs. He doesn’t need to. He grazes his fingertips over Brock’s right cufflink and guides his palm to the asset’s nape. One hand on its leash, one cupping the knob where cervical vertebrae shifts to thoracic. Brock feels the nervous energy coursing through it, and acknowledges the kick in his own heart rate. But he acts like he chills with Pierce like this every day, because they both know being able to pretend they’re equals is as important as knowing they’re not. Because he doesn’t tell even Rollins that he mentally revisits the ’74 dossier every single fucking time he puts his people within range of this weapon. That he knows the leash is only ever as secure as the fragile net Pierce is weaving now. Every life in the room is on that line, a harness made of spun sugar. 

He runs a firm hand down its spine. The bare asset doesn’t feel much different than its armored self: hard and solid as a cinder block. It’s still a hunting breed under the silk and lace. Good balance, sturdy shoulders, strong teeth, intact. 

Brock’s left hand dips into the warm valley between its balls and rump, he feels its hole flutter through the fabric. A low sound in its throat, and it swells too much for the straining underwear, until its cock escapes to press against one thigh. Rock hard again, after coming how many times? He can feel its balls tighten when he strokes its perineum through the sheer panties. The fine hairs on its nape rise to meet his skin when he releases the chain, takes it directly by the collar. 

“Good boy,” Brock tells the asset, a phrase he can’t remember using even on a dog. 

There’s a background hum of surreality at all these parties. The trick is to acknowledge it without dwelling on it, and keep moving. Softer: “Good boy.” Because it feels right.

Pierce smiles and settles back into the loveseat. “The asset is a vessel. It’s made to be filled with our purpose. It _wants_ to be filled.” Brock can’t see his eyes behind the reflection off his glasses.

Holding the collar high and tight, Brock circles around to the asset’s lifted face. It follows him like a sunflower chasing the light. He focuses it with two fingers under its chin, and the asset would be giving him bedroom eyes, half-lidded and syrupy, if he didn’t know better. It nuzzles at his crotch when he guides it close, not as greedy as it was with Kildare, but deliberate enough. It’s slipped into that drunk concentration again.

The night has been playing havoc with Brock’s libido, and it feels good to just have it mouth the front of his suit pants for a while. He likes that through-the-clothes stuff, the texture and friction of it. Takes him back to the horny desperation of his teenage years, or frenzied grinding after the pitch of battle. The soldier writhing on its back in a pile of fur. He’s not as sensitive as its perpetually youthful body, but the thought’s got his cock filling soon enough, and he reaches over the asset to slap its ass and feel the rough pattern of lace stretched over smooth muscle. Every exhale gusting humidity through his trousers, the firm press of barely shielded teeth over wool. 

When he’s ready, he pushes off and takes out his cock. The asset’s mouth falls open right away. Its swollen lower lip burns under the press of Brock’s thumb, red and raw and hot as a wound. He slaps his dick against its cheeks a few times before sliding in. Nothing hard, just the sharp burst of satisfaction from flesh striking flesh to contrast against the velvet crush of its throat. Pain play doesn’t do much for him, and anyway he might fuck up the asset’s conditioning if he gets real rough. It’s attuned to him when he’s acting as handler, and too much damage will be interpreted as correction. When Brock inflicts pain, he keeps it specific. 

The asset almost never gags anymore. It sucks him down to the root, sealed impossibly tight. Not human. More, and less. The power is incredible, like always. So incredible it crowds out everything else, like how _idiotically_ dangerous this is, and how Pierce _just_ told him to follow his instinct, which is to do anything but bury his cock so deep in the Winter Soldier that the tip of its nose is brushing the trail of hair under Brock’s navel. All that coiled destruction allowed to distract him with a suck job. 

Desire flashes down his backbone to his balls and fills him up. He cups the asset’s skull so his fingertips rest under the hinge of its jaw, and Brock can feel its mouth working around his cock, and the moving bones of its head. He thinks of the juicy snap a head makes when the asset ruptures an enemy skull. It doesn’t even need to use its metal hand. Crunch and pop, just like the dead ladybugs underfoot in his aunt’s attic. 

The French have a name for it, he’s sure, for the way Brock imagines himself letting go of the vehicle sometimes, or when the image of himself veering into oncoming traffic is so movie-clear that for a moment he doubts the sight of his hands still at ten and two on the wheel. Whatever it is that calls from the void when he’s safe on the ledge. It looks like this: the stretch of full red lips and lashes shadowing pale cheekbones, a flat-eyed abattoir. 

Goddammit, Brock wants a smoke. 

A strangled noise jumps out of him, cresting on a wave of aroused despair. The asset mewls around his dick in response. The vibrations buzz from his knees to his belly, pooling warm and heavy in his gut. He pulls its head closer and tightens his fist around the collar and chain only good for decoration. The scent of spiced-vanilla shampoo and sweat drift up every time he moves the asset’s hair. He rolls his hips into it, feels so, smells so good. It’s fucked-up how good it smells. Never feels as good as combat, though, the tang of adrenaline and gunpowder. No drug high, no sex, no release can compare.

There won’t be a need for the asset much longer. A few more years and they can put the poor bastard down at last. Brock doubts the post-Insight transition will go entirely smooth, so HYDRA will need to keep STRIKE around until everything cools down. He’ll be necessary. Men like Brock are always necessary. And then? Everything they’ve been working for, finally. World peace seems as distant and fantastic as Santa Claus now that he’s pushing fifty and doesn’t know how to do anything but war. 

Maybe he’ll finally buy a boat, take it around the world. Maybe he’ll arrange to die in a firefight. 

Fuck, he needs a smoke. Cold turkey, two years. Every vice available to him, and all he really wants is cigarette. Brock grabs the asset by the scalp. He’s crashing hard. “Fuckin’. C’mon. _Come on,_ ” he whispers, chasing the climb of physical pleasure, belly clenched until it hurts.

The asset tries to cough. The flexing slickness takes Brock by surprise, so does his orgasm, and he sags against the asset, allowing himself one relieved groan as the pressure rushes from his balls down its throat. Who gets to feed it next? Brock does. Fuck. The asset drinks deeply, relentless in its task, the sensation finally tips into overwhelming after riding the knife’s edge for so long. Brock braces his knees against the side of the divan for support. 

The climax drops out of him and recedes into low tide, until he’s left deflated, emptied out and jittery again. Probably just an electrolyte imbalance. Desert ops will do that. It’s fine.

The asset is panting when Brock tucks his cock away. Without a hand at its collar, its head hangs limp from its shoulders. The ermine piled beneath is matted up, pearly fur gone silver where it’s been ruffled against the grain, a match to the plating on the asset’s arm and decorative cuffs. Ermine – they’re usually buckeye brown, Brock remembers now, like the asset’s hair. The white coat is for winter and the long cold.

Pierce observes politely from the loveseat, wrists folded over one knee. The patient, doting uncle. Light reflecting off his glasses obscures his expression as well as any mask. “I understand,” he says, “we were playing a game.”

A woman says, “Yes, sir.” Eager for the Secretary’s approval, a dirty-blonde from Analytics slips up to the divan and grabs the asset’s chain. Brock recognizes her heart-shaped face and the sporty, short haircut of a soccer star. Emerald dress rucked up over a hard body. Maybe more than Analytics, then. She traps the asset by the scalp and hauls it to her groin, grinding against a mouth already spit-damp from choking on the collar edge. Brock’s still throbbing from its attention. He wonders if getting eaten or fucked by the asset is just as intense, how else it feels different from a person.

By the time Analytics turns it over to sit on its face, Cross is ready to roll again. She sinks down on the asset’s dick while a bearded tech enters it from behind. Cross thumps Analytics in the left tit. Not that she’d feel it – the corset looks about as penetrable as a tac vest. “Race ya, Gina.”

“Yeah?” Analytics-Gina drawls. “Get fucked, Victoria.” 

Cross cocks an eyebrow, makes an exaggerated roll on the asset’s lap, then they’re off riding. 

Attempts at sabotage are frequent and mutual: grappling while they roll against the soldier, snake-quick strikes that one of Brock’s instructors used to call bites – vicious, bruising pinches that isolate nerve clusters on the papery skin of the inner arms and thighs, planting yellow welts that last a week. Maybe the tech guy gets off on street rules and non-lethal roughhousing, because three minutes in and he’s already trying to pull out, except he ain’t going nowhere with the asset’s heels pinned against the small of his back.

“Jesus, you kidding me?” Cross twists around to bat at him as the tech fruitlessly tries to detangle himself, threatening to unseat her. “God’s sake, even the asset can’t believe this.”

The soldier’s shackled wrists twitch limply where they hang on either side of the sofa, but its ankles are still locked around the tech’s waist. Ripe enough to need it, to want something filling it. To groan open-mouthed into Analytics until she’s crossing the finish line, so when its thighs finally fall open to release the bearded tech, Analytics-Gina is too pink in the face to be faking. Brock can see its tongue fluttering against her slit, and her full flush is real. 

She barks out an ugly laugh. “Best buckle down, cupcake, or you’re comin’ in dead last.” Because the asset’s arching under them, shivering and tight as a bow. 

“Absolutely _not._ ” Cross backs up the order with a fist around the asset’s base. Cinches tight enough to squeeze a yelp from the soldier, for one of its legs to jerk and spurn away the spent technician, and already the next guy is moving in to replace him, but Cross swats him away, hissing like a territorial gator. One hand holding it back, the other working on herself as the asset flexes and moans below to no avail, until Cross shakes in triumph and lets the asset thrust up into her, until she’s babbling, “ _Yes, yes, oh fuck yes._ ”

Gina sits on the carpet, ruffling the asset’s hair and grinning like the fox that caught the rooster. She presses her lips to the soldier’s wet temple as Cross comes down from the orgasm, and it can’t, it can’t. Green satin pools around her and she cups its agonized face.

The asset has to come in last. Cross finally slides off its dick and turns backward to sit on its chest, still holding tight around its base. “Gimme a plate. Gimme something nice, like that fois gras.”

Brock rolls his eyes. So much garbage. It’ll get an IV later, sure, but the asset needs at least 10,000 calories a day under battle conditions, and all they’ve been giving it are empty fats and sugars. Rich shit that’ll only make it sick, when they could feed it something halfway decent at least…

“Beef Wellington. High in protein and carbohydrates.” Schwartz hands a plate to Cross. The meat center steams inside the flaky crust like a weeping red eye. 

Goddamn it. Brock could kick himself for not noticing Schwartz sooner. Then again, it’s easy to underestimate the other team leader, not give him his due. Which is only a stronger argument for vigilance. Brock tries to not sound petulant when he mutters, “Plain tenderloin would’ve been better.”

Schwartz pins him down with a side-eye while Cross drains the asset. Muscles in her forearm dance with every long, hard pull, but she can’t produce more than a weak drool over the dish.

“Tut,” Pierce leans forward in his seat, grazes his knuckles against its jaw. “Come on, sweetheart, surely you can do better than that?” To the women he snaps, “Milk it dry. Make it hurt.”

Gina shuffles around to the side of the divan and invades the asset with two fingers, then three. Cross uses both hands to drag from its balls to its foreskin, pulling and pulling, wrestling with stubborn machinery, and between the two of them they force out a few more piteous leaks. They move out of the way and set the dish on the carpet, but the asset has to be jabbed in the ribs before it rolls off the sofa and lands with a thud on all fours. 

The guy Cross waved off earlier decides he’s been waiting dick-out for long enough. Hodges, another STRIKE 3 agent. Since the soldier is unoccupied and already on its knees, he lines up behind it and pushes in. It gurgles over its plate. Half its meal lay abandoned on the ceramic.

“What’s the matter this time?” Pierce speaks gently. The muscles of its back tense in an aborted cringe at his voice. “Aren’t you hungry, don’t you want more?”

The asset looks up with huge, glassy eyes. It looks like it might cry. It does that, sometimes, as a reflex action. “No,” it grates. It starts shaking its head desperately. “No more. Please.”

The show of weakness wins a smile that is Pierce at his least imperious, like he borrowed the expression from somebody else. “No need for modesty. I know how hard you worked today, what a good boy you’ve been.” He keeps the asset’s chin aloft with the toe of one patent leather shoe. Always control the head. “You need so much more, sweetness, and we have plenty to give. You deserve it.” His shoe pushes the asset’s face back down to the plate, and Pierce turns a cold stare to the agent behind it. Hodges snaps his hips forward obediently.

Brock excuses himself. Another drink won’t hurt, not when he’s been spacing them out. Schwartz keeps his body facing the head of the dais, but his eyes follow Brock. He was never watching the fucking. Brock meets and holds his gaze before crossing the threshold, enjoys a spike of warmth when Rollins and Cross lurk up to wait on either side of Schwartz. The asset has consumed its meat and is trying to lap ice-melt from the carpet. Somebody should put down a water dish he thinks vaguely, and leaves.

The ceiling lifts away in the main hall and pulls some of the weight in his chest with it. He lets himself order a tall IPA and walk a full circuit of the room without meeting anyone’s eyes, just breathing and feeling the wet chill of glass against his palm. In his head, the mantra: get back get back get back. So all-consuming that he can’t sort signal from noise, instinct from paranoia. He makes himself take another lap before giving in.

After acclimating to the ballroom, the recreational chamber is low and dark as an animal’s den. The reek of sex hits like a body blow a few steps into the room, humid and thick enough for drowning, enough to soften the frozen Madonna’s features. She’s painful to look at now, a blurred memory he can’t bring into focus. Beneath her outstretched arms the asset is folded over the divan with another stranger finishing in its mouth.

Brock elbows his way back between Schwartz and Cross, careful not to spill his beer. Schwartz has been nothing but sullen and mulish since his return, but it won’t hurt to keep him flanked by two bigger guys. Not that Cross isn’t dangerous, but mass is momentum and Schwartz is thicker.

“Schwartz,” Pierce says, like he’s a fucking mind reader, “You seem tense. Perhaps because you haven’t enjoyed a round this evening? We can reserve the next spot for you.”

Schwartz stares a hole in the carpet. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

“Oh yeah?” Gutierrez clicks his tongue in amusement. He’s leaning against the wall by Pierce’s loveseat, where Agent Graves has slumped to a fetal curl on the rug in front of them. “Didn’t seem that way earlier when you were gettin’ handsy, all up in—”

“ _I don’t want sloppy seventeenths off your braindead slut,_ ” Schwartz chokes out. His lips peel back from his teeth in something not quite a snarl, wild eyes fixed on empty air. Professional enough to not engage anyone else in his unchecked show of emotion, thank Christ. He’s red-faced, but the stress veins disappearing into his crewcut are just as likely from his balls shriveling up now that his brain has caught up with his mouth.

Everybody but the most wasted deskjobs in the back know better than to acknowledge the outburst. At least half this job is mastering the lack of reaction: suffocate escalation under a slab of apathy. Don’t get kinetic. 

The moment is thickly, intensely neutral. Neutral like high tea, neutral as a coiled snake, until Pierce decides to look elsewhere, dismissing Schwartz as easily as if he’d stated a preference for baked potatoes over mashed. “Rollins, then.” Ah, fuck.

Rollins stands at attention like he’s about to receive a briefing. Feigned ignorance and wishful thinking. Brock knows. Brock could have told him their usual social engineering bullshit just gets Pierce hard. The Secretary was born and bred in that briar patch, if you can call boarding schools and Washington and multiple estates a briar patch. He’s never felt urgency in his life. Trigger phrase roulette is a game for half-mad field agents; men like Pierce only play what they know they can win.

Pierce always wins. “Big, robust man like you? Must have big appetites.” He spreads a hand over one globe of the asset’s generous ass. It’s still draped like a sack over the remains of the couch. Its mouth is out of the picture and the black panties are in delicate tatters across the floor. “No doubt you’ve proven your virility already, but I’ve been here a while, enough for a young buck to regain his drive. Restraint is a virtue, but there’s no need for it here, Rollins. It’s sinful to let bounty go to waste.” Pierce digs his fingers into muscle, gives it a testing jostle that ripples the flesh down the asset’s heavy thigh and spreads it open. Spent fluid leaks out of it to join the mess slicked all down its legs. Pierce isn’t smiling anymore. 

Brock doesn’t smile either when Rollins meets his glance. Jack’s no idiot, he can read the writing on the wall. Pierce won’t accept a second refusal. 

Rollins sees Pierce blocking the prophylactics, and knows he’s meant to go bareback into the fucked-sloppy clench of HYDRA’s walking weapon, because this is a test. Everything is a test. Brock shrugs, eyebrows cocky despite the cold sliding in his guts. Not the first time they’ve been jerked around by higher-ups, won’t be the last.

Stupid to think that shit would only happen on the battlefield and never intrude in waking life. Real life. Anyhow, the Burj wasn’t _real_ real, and maybe that’s how Rollins was able to finish quick and tuck himself away. Brock doesn’t pay much attention, gives him some privacy in the fashion of barrack showers and train cars. He keeps not paying attention while Rollins stands at his side for exactly ten minutes before excusing himself to the restroom, where Rollins will exhaust his personal supply of sanitizing wet-wipes on his hands and body, then pretend nothing happened. 

Others take his place in the asset, many others. Pierce murmurs ugly nothings to the soldier while he strokes its hair, dark brown gone black from the halo of sweat against its scalp. He won’t let his pet retreat into itself the way Brock knows it wants to, as much as it can want anything.

Schwartz shifts his weight on the dais like an infuriating, ceaseless metronome. Brock sips his IPA. The asset does as it is bidden. He measures the night in bitter doses. 

By the end, the asset isn’t even crying. It shakes and drools and comes dry – dick pulsing but empty – but Brock can see it’s completely checked out. By the end, it’s treading water like a creature ready to drown. 

“Looks like the last circle of hell,” slurs some troglodyte with his dick hanging free.

“The ninth circle is for betrayers. Your Judases, your Brutuses.” Pierce stands up to button his jacket. “Lust,” he says, “is only the second circle of the pit.”

There’s no disputing the man’s a genius, but sometimes, Brock thinks, Pierce is too clever for his own good. They’re surrounded by more than the drunken princes of nepotism. He forgets STRIKE is elite, not a bunch of grunts fresh out of juvie who can pass the physicals. As if Cross isn’t fluent in four languages. Like Rumlow doesn’t know his fucking Dante. HYDRA starts tracking early, actively recruits from gifted programs, and if _Rumlow_ knows Dante, others will recognize the allusion as well. 

Sinners in the ninth circle don’t burn. Traitors spend eternity in ice.

Schwartz is shifting like a motherfucker, but Brock’s starting to worry more about the asset. Altering its state of consciousness can interfere with the compliance codes. Erratic agents are a problem, an erratic asset is an end. 

He’s about to insinuate as much when Pierce sidles up to touch his back. “You’ve done well, Rumlow.” Pierce pitches his voice low. “I’ll pass it along to Radcliffe and Shaw. Your assistance tonight will be remembered.”

Brock jerks his chin upward in a curt nod. 

Maybe that didn’t look as cool-yet-respectful as he thought, because Pierce just keeps watching him with a warm blankness that means he’s either waiting for more from Brock, or his personality software has temporarily gone offline. His palm is still against Brock’s lumbar, and it’s starting to feel like a prom date gone bad before Pierce finally cocks his head toward the ceiling. “The architecture is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Yeah? Brock’s eighty percent sure the decorative style is called ‘arabesque,’ but he’s not gonna risk it. He settles on, “Very ornate.”

“Indeed.” Pierce smiles. “What a horrid nest we’ve made for ourselves.” 

Can’t argue with that one. But there’s no wait for response this time – Pierce is already ambling away. Cryptic as usual, he’s out the door and folding into the velvet background. Gone. It gives Brock a private thrill that Pierce’s bouts of drama never fail to unimpress: he hasn’t swallowed _all_ of Alexander’s Kool-Aid. That’s his secret anchor to sanity, knowing the man is enchanting except when he’s trying to be, with his non sequiturs and architecture chat. Fucking bureaucrats. Brock shudders, though, and his Ma would say a goose walked over his grave.

Brock sends a text from inside his jacket. He shields the glow while pretending to straighten a lapel.

Without Pierce, the room feels lighter. Without Pierce, the room is a naked disaster. Furniture lays overturned or listing drunkenly, stained with spilled delicacies; expensive fabrics matted with sweat, lube, and come. Used up. The den is lurid as a post-concert field, after the crowd dissolves and the sun rises and you realize you’re just standing in a trash-strewn pasture.

At the epicenter of this magnificent ruin: the Winter Soldier. It sprawls before the remains of the Madonna – now a dripping, eyeless horror spattered with the stigmata of wine. Her face has melted into a lump with empty sockets and a maw gaping in agony. Brock resists the urge to cross himself. 

The asset doesn’t look much better, with its red-rimmed eyes and split lip. It’s a shivering, wet heap. Simple over-stimulation. It takes more than sensory overload to render the asset non-functional. But that ragged panting. Shit, Brock forgot to put down a water dish, didn’t he? 

Later. An IV would be even better. Shit. It’s a struggle to feel anything about this right now, but a necessary chore.

Then Schwartz is crowding him, shoulders-up and way too intense. “Do I have to be here for this?” For the next part.

“I don’t know,” Brock rears back. The aggression is contagious, makes wants to punch something. He loads his voice thick with pity. “Do you _have_ to?”

That does it. Schwartz flushes red, then drains white. He’s been in the game long enough to know there’s duty, and then there’s _duty_. Accountability. Solidarity. Punishment. Schwartz pulls a suppressed 9-mil from his waistband – a gun he sneaked back in after his first departure – and tucks it flat against Brock’s dress shirt inside his jacket. He stalks away, but unlike Pierce, he doesn’t leave the room.

Plenty of others are leaving. Cross and the blonde from Analytics are sauntering back to the main ballroom arm-in-arm, their heels dangling from their free hands. Gina’s expression is less relaxed, but she’s not fighting the escort-style lock Cross has not-quite-clamped on her wrist. 

Rollins drifts back in against the thinning crowd. Brock glances at him in greeting and looks away. “Sorry. If I knew he was gonna –“

“Forget it.” Rollins palms him a cigarette because he’s a fucking enabler. “I have.” He bumps his shoulder against Brock and gives him a look that’s also a question. 

Brock nods. “It’s going down. We got ‘em.” 

“Wish I could say I was surprised, but idiots never can resist going for the dollar.” 

“Yeah, well, a fool and his money are soon parted.” He can _hear_ Jack’s eye-roll.

They watch Gutierrez as he intercepts Hodges, one of Schwartz’s STRIKE boys headed for the door, and spins him around toward the zombied Graves, still curled on the carpet: “Don’t leave squad behind, right?” Gutierrez falls in line beside Rollins with a head bob and a “Hey, man,” then looks over at Rumlow, says, “I’m thinking of breaking it off with Karen.”

Rollins pops off with, “Must be runnin’ out of those holistic low calorie MREs,” because he can’t not be a dick, ever.

This is the first thing on Gutierrez’s mind? Brock waits for elaboration. When nothing comes, he says, “You telling me or asking me?”

Gutierrez seems to consider it as they watch Hodges wrestle with his limp team member. “Like, I admire dedication to a principle, obviously, but _boundaries,_ man. Are we committing to each other, or to each others’ lifestyle?”

“Hm.” Brock rolls his new cigarette between thumb and index finger. Local brand. On the other side of the divan, Hodges is struggling to prop Graves upright against the loveseat, but the heavier man keeps sliding off until Schwartz orders another STRIKE 3 member to help support him. Kildare loiters over to watch, grinning like a dope. “Guess that depends,” Brock says. “You know the story of the farmer and the viper.”

“Is it the same as the frog and the scorpion? I know the moral. Don’t pick up a snake if you don’t wanna get bit, or a scorpion if you don’t wanna get stung.”

“Yep. No point in acting surprised when things behave according to their nature. Way I see it, you hook up with that girl at a wellness retreat in– what, Taos? – you kinda knew what you were getting into.” He lifts the smoke to his lips.

Rollins passes over a light. “She at least puts up with your weird ass, Gutierrez,” he says fondly.

“I suppose,” Gutierrez muses. “Maybe we’re all just looking for someone to tolerate our eccentricities.”

Brock takes a drag, and the cigarette tastes like poison. He keeps sucking it down. “If you two’re done flirting, go clear out that pair by the table, G.”

Gutierrez cruises over, claps his arms around a baffled couple and steers them back into the ballroom: “Did you know they have mini-lobsters?” He nods at Schwartz on the way out.

The corner of Jack’s mouth quirks, but there’s no mirth in it. He just tucks another cigarette into Brock’s vest pocket, squeezes his bicep in farewell, always the mother hen. One more out the door. None loyal can stay. 

Within moments a hard, familiar shadow falls over his right shoulder. Dragomirov plants himself, a welcome gargoyle, even though Brock can hear how much he hates the scene with every venom consonant: “Got your message.” He flashes his phone.

Even now, Brock has to smile. “Thanks.” If Dragomirov is surprised by his relapse, he doesn’t show it. Brock takes another drag and says to Kildare, “Show’s over, kid. You get the asset cleaned up and back to containment.”

That knocks the content laziness right off his face. “That thing?” Kildare looks disgusted. “Clean it?”

“How else you think it gets done? Magic? Hose it down, scrub it down, I don’t give a fuck.”

“I’m STRIKE, not a tech.”

“So you oughta be comfortable getting your hands dirty, _Rookie._ ” Brock exhales a veil of smoke that eels up to frame his glare. “You ain’t the first to have to put the asset away, and you won’t be the last. You gotta pay to play, kid.”

Kildare’s sour about it, but he circles toward the asset in a wary orbit. By the time he’s screwing around with its restraints, the room is empty but for the STRIKE teams. It had been an easy evacuation; most of the agents had just read the air and quietly dispersed on their own.

“So,” Dragomirov rumbles. “What is emergency?” 

“Not an emergency. New intel. Short notice.” Brock lowers his voice. “When we get them packed out.” He tilts his head to indicate Kildare and the asset.

The kid’s managed to unclasp the cuffs at its ankles, but seems unwilling to move its limp body enough to free its collar. He handles it as gingerly as a sleeper he’s trying not to disturb. The asset’s half-lidded eyes stare at nothing, it shivers. Dragomirov sneers. 

“He might need a hand...” Brock looks apologetic, and Dragomirov sighs, but the Russian starts toward the mess like he’s impatient for an excuse to intervene.

“Hey.” A token of mercy occurs to Brock. “Want a drink first? To give him a chance?”

But no. Dragomirov waves a hand in decline, too professional to endure Kildare’s floundering for a moment longer than necessary. “Later.” A shame. 

He makes three steps toward the asset before Brock double-taps him in the back of the head. 

It’s loud even with a suppressor – sharp cracks like branches breaking in winter – but not deafening. Dragomirov drops to his knees. His body balances upright for a moment, genuflecting to the ice Madonna, then tips forward onto the carpet.

“Jesus! What the fuck!” Kildare gapes at the corpse. The left side of his face is flecked with red mist, and his fear of the soldier is forgotten as he clutches it, half-hiding behind its mass. The asset is absolutely still. 

Hodges and a couple of the others sober enough to react are at full alert. It won’t matter. The half dozen men take their cue from their leader, Schwartz, looking grim but not alarmed behind Brock’s shoulder, but Kildare is losing it. He just saw Dragomirov’s face explode, blossom into a red garden of exit wounds. Under the blood spray he’s a horrified white. Above him the Madonna screams and weeps in effigy. 

There’s an odd twist in Brock’s chest. “He knew better than to throw in with those fucking fake contractors, to fall for easy bait,” he snaps, feeling unexpectedly bereft. “Tracked bait. Stupid. Wasteful. _He_ knew better, goddammit. Dragomirov shed _blood_ with us. For us. Not like _you._ ” 

Kildare’s pale face floods with understanding. “Rumlow… no, Brock, listen-”

“Shut up.” He points to Kildare with the gun. Kildare flinches, but Brock hands the pistol back to Schwartz. “I get it, kid. Hard life, easy money. And more experienced, senior agents already on the take? Well, shit. What else are you supposed to do, college boy? It’s almost enough to make you think you could fool HYDRA, or rob us. Or leave. Except,” and he can’t disguise his contempt, “you knew what this was when you picked it up.”

He turns his back on them and walks out. Schwartz is already gone. 

“Liar!” Kildare sobs, furious. “Liars and bullshit doublethink artists!” They all knew what this was. No one leaves HYDRA.

As Brock steps past the reinforced door, he snuffs his cigarette against the threshold and commands, “ _Soldat._ ” 

Its heavy slate-blue stare rolls to Rumlow, confused to glacial in less than a breath. Doubt crystallizes into hard fractals, and the asset goes from perfumed background furniture to the center of gravity. The monster is awake. Ready to comply.

Brock says, “Rip ‘em up.” 

The soldier’s anchor tears from its base like a chain made of foil. Filigreed wallpaper erupts in a discharge of splinters and Sheetrock powder. Three of the damned STRIKE agents are already at full run, but it won’t matter. It won’t matter. Brock doesn’t stay to watch, and the vault behind him seals shut on a scream.

And if, for a moment before the slaughter, the asset meets his gaze as clear and as lucid as if they were old friends mid-conversation, and its eyes narrow in a cold promise, well. 

It’s something Brock can worry about later.

 _Whuk-whuk-whuk._ His heart beats like chopper blades, keeping him suspended over the void.

**Author's Note:**

> x  
> x  
> x  
> x  
> x  
> x  
> x
> 
> Please pay attention to the tags! Bucky is used as a murder-tool, then -- as shown through Brock Rumlow's dehumanizing POV -- suffers prolonged abused as a sexual party favor in a lavish HYDRA soirée. Bucky gets to hella murder some HYDRA traitors in the end, but only at the behest of other agents.
> 
> Special thanks to my friend Dara, who lived in Dubai and shared some experiences after I furtively approached him for fact-checking and the fear I was going too far into extravagance, only to learn I fell pretty short of reality.
> 
> Gutierrez is right, though: [the live version of "Life During Wartime" *is* superior. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAtn6I5rbY)
> 
> BONUS:  
> 


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